Antidepressants Not Clinically Useful for Back Pain While professional guidelines recommend antidepressants for back pain, researchers point out the lack of evidence for their usefulness. 26 Antidepressants are commonly prescribed for chronic pain, including back pain, sciatica, and osteoarthritis. Major pain guidelines recommend the use of serotonin-noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), most commonly duloxetine. Yet, the evidence for antidepressants in pain is scant. A new study in the BMJ, led by Giovanni Ferreira at the University of Sydney, Australia, aimed to assess the evidence for these drugs in treating back pain and osteoarthritis. They found that the vast majority of the studies were at high risk of bias, and the outcomes (while statistically significant) did not meet a threshold for