In what is becoming an alarming trend, the makers of certain anti-depressant drugs withheld 1/3 of their studies’ results in order to obtain government approval for their drugs. Pharmaceutical companies that manufactured the popular anti-depressants Prozac and Paxil never published 1/3 of their drug trial studies in order to get the government to approve the drug, misleading doctors and consumers about the drugs’ effectiveness and safety. The new findings, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that about 60 percent of people taking the drugs report significant relief from depression, compared with roughly 40 percent of those on placebo pills. But when the less positive, unpublished trials are included, the advantage shrinks, calling into question the real value of the drugs themselves. It’s alarming to note that 94 percent of the positive studies found their way into print, just 14 percent of those with disappointing or uncertain results did. This leaves doctors and their patients at a significant disadvantage when trying to determine treatment options.