Despite the prevalence of treatment-resistant depression, many pharmaceutical companies have abandoned the development of new antidepressants. Experts have attributed this, in part, to the low quality of preclinical tests available in this field, often citing over-reliance on animal behavioral screens, such as the forced swim test (FST). This retrospective review assessed whether compounds tested in the FST by major pharmaceutical companies were shown to have antidepressant effects in humans. Of 109 compounds identified, only 28% had been explored for antidepressant effects in humans. Of these, there were only three for which the FST appeared to positively predict antidepressant efficacy, but none are currently approved to treat any type of depression. With such poor accuracy for identifying novel antidepressants, the FST might not be a useful screening tool for this purpose.

尽管难治性抑郁症普遍存在，但许多制药公司已经放弃了新抗抑郁药的开发。专家将此部分归因于该领域可用的临床前测试质量低下，通常是过度依赖动物行为筛查，例如强迫游泳测试 (FST)。这项回顾性审查评估了主要制药公司在 FST 中测试的化合物是否被证明对人类具有抗抑郁作用。在已鉴定的 109 种化合物中，只有 28% 已被探索用于人类的抗抑郁作用。其中，只有三种 FST 似乎可以正面预测抗抑郁药的疗效，但目前没有一种被批准用于治疗任何类型的抑郁症。由于识别新型抗抑郁药的准确性如此差，