So was this really a mistake? You decide.

At the American Psychiatric Association meeting this week, Wyeth displayed some interesting posters about Pristiq, that curious version of Effexor XR the drugmaker hopes will be approved for vasomotor symptoms, otherwise known as menopausal hot flashes.

This comes from Morgan Stanley analyst Jami Rubin, who wrote in an investor note that the data indicated the low-dose, or 50 milligram, Pristiq was no better than placebo until the sixth week of usage, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog.

“We are underwhelmed by an antidepressant that takes 6 weeks to work,” Rubin’s note said. “We see downside risk to our Pristiq peak sales estimate of $1.5 billion if this data is representative of the entire data set.”

Hmm. Is six weeks too long? Pardon the pun, but will that set anyone’s world on fire?

Well, most of the data were about high doses of the drug, which have been associated with nausea. But Wyeth claims the low dose is effective and doesn’t have the same side effect profile. There’s one catch - Wyeth hasn’t divulged very much, which drives Wall Street crazy.

And now we know why. “Once we asked Wyeth why this was included in the poster, the company quickly scrambled to cover up the graph and then immediately stopped handing out posters,” Rubin wrote.

Wyeth spokesman Doug Petkus wrote the Health Blog with this tongue-tied explanation: The drugmaker “inadvertently” included the “partial depression study results” in its presentation at the psychiatric meeting.

“Wyeth believes it would be inappropriate to draw conclusions from this single display of data from one study and reaffirms its previous disclosure that the preliminary clinical results from the low-dose depression studies significantly enhance the profile of Pristiq.” He said Wyeth will disclose “comprehensive” results from two studies later this year.

Really? If there’s better data, why wasn’t that flashed at the APA? You can be certain those “comprehensive” results will be dissected faster than a hot flash can occur.

Hat tip to The Health Blog.

[tags]Pristiq, Wyeth[/tags]