Saffron and major depressive disorder: meta-analysis of clinical trials (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Saffron and major depressive disorder: meta-analysis of clinical trials (2013)

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

25 pointsjb199123 comments

This is a marketing paper.

Competing interests: Drs. Anton and Hausenblas serve as scientific advisors and as consultants for the company ReBody, LLC, which is an affiliate of Reserve Life Organics., LLC d/b/a Reserveage Organics, the developer and marketer of a product in which saffron is used.

It's a meta study. There can be bias in selecting the studies, and the way they interpret the results. But it doesn't necessarily means there is, further review is needed.

I think the heuristic of giving this a weight of approximately zero is reasonable, since nobody here is actually going to go check out every study in the meta analysis nor is anyone here going to verify the statistics of this paper.

Disagree. Even if there is strong selection bias, the positive evidence that they present is worth considering.

I wish people were this skeptical of pharmaceutical companies researching their own products.

First and last author both work for a company that sells saffron products for medicinal use.

In addition to this, their company (or its parent) funded the trial too.

In fairness it's not a trial, it's a meta-analysis. So people looking at papers and creating a spreadsheet or something. They can be pretty cheap, rather than the billion or two it takes to get a new drug to market.

I haven't read the paper but the absolute best outcome would be that they list all the studies they evaluate for inclusion (which is most of the work, finding and evaluating) so that others could perform similar analyses with a big head start.

Not only that, but the analysis seems to be based on rather small sample studies, all based in Iran, the worlds largest saffron exporting country.

At least they state this caveat themselves "Larger clinical trials, conducted by research teams outside of Iran, with long-term follow-ups are needed before firm conclusions can be made regarding saffron's efficacy and safety for treating depressive symptoms."

This is not news worthy at all.

to their credit, saffron is a decently popular depression remedy in Iran, even today.

Avicenna described saffron's anti-depressant effects literally a thousand years ago, in a textbook that remained the standard medical dogma even in the western universities until 17th century.

a thousand years long track record, this is definitely worth investigating deeper.

As much as I love saffron, and thus wouldn't mind if it were proven to have health benefits, this is definitely not science that inspires confidence...

Priors:

70% that this is biased marketing paper.

70% that most sources for this meta study are very biased.

Reason:

- Two authors work for or a company that sells saffron products for medicinal use.

- same company funded this meta study.

- meta study uses mostly Iranian studies.

- Iran accounts for 90 percent of annual safron world production

Here is more resent single study (funded by Activ'Inside)

Effects of Saffron Extract Supplementation on Mood, Well-Being, and Response to a Psychosocial Stressor in Healthy Adults: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Parallel Group, Clinical Trial

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2020.60612...

I can't help but associate the smell of saffron with medicine for some reason.

Or Indian food, I love saffron rice.

For information on supplements like this, examine.com[1] is great. For many things, there is a "Human Effect Matrix" on there, which gives a good overview of the effects that were observed in studies, their magnitude, and how consistently they were found. For saffron for example, the evidence that it can help against depression is fairly solid, as other studies have shown as well[2].

Sadly, a lot of information on Examine is hidden behind a paywall by now, but it's still a really valuable resource.

[1]: https://examine.com/supplements/saffron/#effect-matrix [2]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31669837/

In case others were wondering, Examine requires a membership for the human effect matrix.

That's strange, I don't have a membership and can see "Human Effect Matrices" for individual supplements without a problem. Only the inverse search, i.e. the matrix for "what helps against depression" is limited to three supplements for me.

You're right. It gives me some stuff, but says to see the full details I would need a membership.

Examine membership is WELL worth it. The first page of the human effect matrix: https://prnt.sc/MSN54mFgUAP0

The combination of "notable effects" and "very high consistency" is pretty rare among supplements. I should eat more saffron...

I would have expected that since 2013 some study with more substance would have appeared...

Thats good. That's not going to be cheap at round $200 per ounce.

Depends on how much of it is required for antidepressant effect. It may not be that much.

Saffron definitely has psychotropic effects, there are anecdotal reports of mild MDMA-like effects when used sublingually in a satchel.

Not that surprising because safrole is an MDMA precursor.

True. At 100mg per day (from one of the studies) it would be about $250 per year (at spice prices, no idea what pharma will mark it up as).

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