Table 3.

Comparison of SSRIs Efficacy and Tolerability vs. Agomelatine

	SSRIs	Agomelatine
GI disturbances	x [a]	0 [c]
Long-term weight gain	x/xx [a]	0 [c]
Daytime sleepiness	x/xx [a]	0 [c]
Sexual dysfunction (may be dose-related)	xx/xxx [a]	0 [c][d]
Discontinuation symptoms	x/xx [a]	0/x [e]
Efficacy on more severe depression	“questioned” [b]	Preliminary [f]observations reported agomelatine to be efficacious as long-term RCT evidences showed its efficacy in the prevention of major depressive episode recurrence [g]

^[a]Masand and Gupta, 1999

^[b]Anderson, 2000; Sonawalla and Fava, 2001; Vestergaard et al., 1993

^[c]Hindmarch et al., 2000; Judge et al., 2002; Michelson et al., 2000; Rosenbaum et al., 1998; Montgomery et al., 2004

^[d]100 mg/day regimen of agomelatine were reported to be associated with possible side effects (Loo et al., 2003)

^[e]Discontinuation cases may be related to a non satisfactory antidepressant response when a low-dose, monotherapy regimen, is established and may be comparable to placebo-related ones (Goodwin et al., 2009)

^[f]Olié and Kasper, 2007

^[g]Goodwin et al., 2009

Note: “0” should be clinically considered as a “placebo-comparable” profile in most of the cases