Am J Psychiatry 1991; 148:1566-1571
Copyright © 1991 by American Psychiatric Association
A placebo-controlled, double-blind crossover study of fluoxetine in trichotillomania
GA Christenson, TB Mackenzie, JE Mitchell and AL Callies
Department of Psychiatry, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455.
OBJECTIVE: It has been proposed by some investigators that
trichotillomania, a disorder of chronic hair pulling, is a variant of
obsessive-compulsive disorder, and some studies have suggested that the
antiobessional agents clomipramine and fluoxetine are useful in treating
this disorder. The authors investigated the efficacy of fluoxetine in the
treatment of trichotillomania. METHOD: Twenty-one adult chronic hair
pullers were recruited into an 18-week placebo- controlled, double-blind
crossover study of fluoxetine, in doses up to 80 mg/day. The fluoxetine and
placebo treatment phases consisted of 6- week trials of each agent
separated by a 5-week washout period. Fifteen subjects (14 female and one
male) completed the study; an additional female subject dropped out at 16
weeks after developing a drug reaction. RESULTS: No significant Drug by
Period interactions were found in weekly subject ratings of hair pulling,
weekly subject ratings of the urge to pull hair, weekly assessments of the
number of hair- pulling episodes, or the estimated amount of hair pulled
per week. CONCLUSIONS: The short-term efficacy of fluoxetine in the
treatment of trichotillomania was not demonstrated in this study.
