Manufactured by Forest Pharmaceuticals, Celexa (generic name: citalopram HBr) came to the market in 1999. It is a newer drug belonging to the class of antidepressants known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).
Because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved the use of Celexa for pediatric depression, Forest is legally prohibited from promoting it for such uses. But doctors are allowed to prescribe drugs off-label where they see fit, and Celexa is the fourth-most-prescribed medication for pediatric depression.
Forest Laboratories received a wide-ranging request from New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer, asking for information about how the company tested and promoted drugs like its antidepressant Celexa for so-called off-label, or as yet unapproved, uses.
Mr. Spitzer's action follows an article in the New York Times that disclosed that Forest did not tell a medical journal about a failed, unpublicized trial of Celexa in children and adolescents when it published an article about a positive trial of the same drug in the same types of patients. Some of the article's authors were Forest employees.
