A government-financed study, which tracked nearly 500 patients for several months in treatment, found that 8 in 10 children can recover from disabling anxiety if they are treated with a combination of talk therapy and an antidepressant medicine. The study was released online Thursday by The New England Journal of Medicine.

The findings are a result of the largest study of anxiety in children yet, paid for by the National Institute of Mental Health and offer vital guidance about how is best to treat young people with separation anxiety, social phobia and generalized anxiety disorder. These conditions affect as many as 20 percent of children and teenagers in the United States.

The study "clearly showed that combination treatment is the most effective for these children," Dr. John Walkup of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who worked on the study, said in a statement. Combining the drug sertraline, available as a generic and under the brand name Zoloft, with therapy, worked best, Walkup added.

Sixty percent of the children who got cognitive therapy got better, and 55 percent in the sertraline-only group improved, while only 24 percent in the placebo group improved.

Results also showed that the treatments were indeed safe. Children taking sertraline alone showed no more side effects than the children taking the placebo and few children discontinued the trial due to side effects. In addition, no child attempted suicide, a rare side effect sometimes associated with antidepressant medications in children. On the other hand, cognitive behavioral therapy was associated with less insomnia, fatigue, sedation, and restlessness than was sertraline.