Rachel Shmuts, DO Assistant Professor Department of Psychiatry Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine Stratford, New Jersey
Abigail Kay, MD Associate Professor Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior Thomas Jefferson University Hospital Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Melanie Beck, DO PGY-1 Psychiatry Resident Cooper Medical School of Rowan University AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center Camden, New Jersey
Disclosures Dr. Kay is a speaker for the American Association for the Treatment of Opiate Dependence and a suboxone trainer for the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry. Drs. Shmuts and Beck report no financial relationships with any companies whose products are mentioned in this article, or with manufacturers of competing products.
Contraindicated in patients receiving MAOIs. Buspirone should not be prescribed to patients with depression who are receiving treatment with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) because the combination may precipitate a hypertensive reaction.4 A minimum washout period of 14 days from the MAOI is necessary before initiating buspirone.9
Idiosyncratic adverse effects. As with all pharmaceuticals, buspirone may produce idiosyncratic adverse effects. Faber and Sansone24 reported a case of a woman who experienced hair loss 3 months into treatment with buspirone. After cessation, her alopecia resolved.
Questionable efficacy for some anxiety subtypes. Buspirone has been studied as a treatment of other common psychiatric conditions, such as social phobia and anxiety in the setting of smoking cessation. However, it has not proven to be effective over placebo in treating these anxiety subtypes.25,26
Short half-life. Because of its relatively short half-life (2 to 3 hours), buspirone requires dosing 2 to 3 times a day, which could increase the risk of noncompliance.4 However, some patients might prefer multiple dosing throughout the day due to perceived better coverage of their anxiety symptoms.
Limited incentive for future research.Because buspirone is available only as a generic formulation, there is little financial incentive for pharmaceutical companies and other interested parties to study what may be valuable uses for buspirone. For example, there is no data available on comparative augmentation of buspirone and SGAs with antidepressants for depression and/or anxiety. There is also little data available about buspirone prescribing trends or why buspirone may be underutilized in clinical practice today.
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