Actually, in the animal kingdom, Eli Lilly has renamed it Reconcile, and just launched the prescription pill for all those uptight dogs who can’t bear to be apart from their masters.

The beef-flavored chewable tablet “basically calms the dog and makes it more receptive to the (behavior management) training that’s supposed to go along with it,” Steve Connell, a Lilly veterinarian, tells the Associated Press.

Here’s the problem, as Lilly’s Connell explains it: Dogs are pack animals, and they sometimes develop a deep attachment to humans, who essentially become part of their pack. This makes them anxious when the humans leave.

Lilly estimates that more than 10 million dogs suffer from some form of separation anxiety. Some may whine or bark. Others chew up or destroy things when left alone. “A lot of people who have this problem with their pets will come home to a trashed house,” says Lilly spokesman Joan Todd. How Lilly came up with this number isn’t clear.

This strikes Pharmalot as remarkable. Back when the FDA approved the pill in January, Pharmalot looked at a document on the agency web site and found some interesting details. Click here and turn to page 7. Under effectiveness, it says that dogs treated with Prozac - whoops, we mean Reconcile - showed improvement with depression. That’s uplifting.

Now, go back to page 5, Table 3 lists adverse reactions, and 71 of 216 doggies, or 32.9 percent, were listed as calm, lethargic or depressed, compared with just 10.4 percent of the control group. Hard to believe calm is confused with depressed, but still, that’s a big number. And this adverse event was reported more than any other.

In other words, the antidepressant caused dogs to be depressed (or calm, if you’re an optimist with a dog that chews up the house when left alone).

There was no info on suicides. Maybe that trial data was never given the FDA.

Further reading…
The Associated Press.[tags]Dogs, Eli Lilly[/tags]