The United States House of Representatives’ Congressional Oversight and Investigation Committee on Thursday was scheduled to hold a Hearing on “Antidepressants and Children” in Washington, D.C.

The Committee is investigating what the Food and Drug Administration and pharmaceutical makers knew about the safety of antidepressants before the drug industry began issuing warnings about the effects of drugs like Paxil earlier this year, said Jim Fitzgerald, an attorney with the Fitzgerald Law Firm, in a statement.

Thursday’s hearing was scheduled for July 20, 2004, but was postponed at the last minute.

In the past few months, even more researchers, doctors and medical journals have criticized drug makers over their choices of which clinical trials to publish and not to publish.

Facing accusations earlier this year, Europe’s largest drug maker GlaxoSmithKline agreed to post more data on its Web site. GSK will publish a database including all tests on drugs sold by the company, but the database will be limited to tests conducted since 2000, the year Glaxo Wellcome merged with SmithKline Beecham. Glaxo has said that the database would also contain results of earlier tests that the company deems medically significant.

Following the September 9th hearings, the FDA will hold two more days of hearings on September 13-14.

The hearings will include a presentation of the Columbia University Report on Children & SSRIs. This recent review revealed “a statistically significant association of suicidal events with antidepressant drug treatment in short- term pediatric clinical trials for all indications,” according to Dr. Andrew Mosholder, a medical reviewer for the FDA.

(via PR Newswire)