According to a recent study funded by the Studies to Advance Autism Research and Treatment (STAART) network - comprising National Institutes of Health - the antidepressant Citalopram (Celexa), a standard prescribed for helping autistic children control their repetitive behaviors, is essentially not any better than a placebo.

The study led by Bryan H. King, MD - Director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Seattle Children's Hospital and Vice Chairman of psychiatry at the University of Washington School of Medicine - arrived at the findings about Citolopram after a multi-site clinical trial. Published in Archives of General Psychiatry, the nationwide trial's results have experts deliberating on the correctness of antidepressants used for treating children with ASD.

For the study, King and other researchers from six academic medical centers, including UCLA, registered 149 autistic children, in the age-group 5-17 years, with compulsive behaviors classified as moderate or worse. After 3 months, only 33 percent of the 73 children who were given citalopram showed improvements in repetitive behaviors - as measured by clinicians and parents- in comparison to the 34 percent of the 76 children who took a placebo.

The findings of the study dispute the commonly-held hypothesis that repetitive behaviors in children suffering from autism spectrum disorders ASD resemble the repetitive behaviors generally found in cases of obsessive compulsive disorders (OCD), for which Citalopram is administered.