OBJECTIVES: To estimate the probability of clinical response, remission, and treatment withdrawal of antidepressants including TCAs, SSRIs, mirtazapine, buproprion and SNRIs in elderly patients with MDD using indirect comparison (MTC) and meta-regression (MR) methods. METHODS: Published systematic reviews of AD in elderly patients with MDD were used to extract data from RCTs of comparator treatments reporting response or remission or treatment withdrawal. Studies with less than 6 weeks duration, open label extension studies, studies in patients with significant dementia were excluded. Bayesian MTC and MR analyses, enabling indirect comparisons of interventions while respecting randomization, were performed using OpenBugs 3.0.2, adjusting for placebo control, baseline disease severity, treatment duration, age, patients with late onset depression as study or arm level covariates as appropriate.  Assuming similar class efficacy TCAs and SSRIs were grouped. RESULTS: The final dataset included 40 studies, with 87 comparator arms. Placebo control was associated with a reduction in the log odds ratio (LOR) of response vs placebo for all treatments. Severity and publication year was marginally correlated with response. Posterior median predicted response and remission rates in non-placebo controlled studies ranged between 71.9% (buproprione) and 77.1% (duloxetine), remission between 29.4% (SSRIs), 42.7% (duloxetine) and 58.1% (TCAs). Predicted withdrawal rates for non-placebo controlled studies vary between 25.7% (duloxetine) and 40% (venlafaxine). Remission results were sensitive to how the mean placebo incidence across studies was modeled. CONCLUSIONS: In the absence of head-to-head clinical trials, this analysis provides comparative estimates of relative treatment effect of AD among elderly with MDD while statistically taking into account heterogeneity. Although statistically not different, results suggest that among the elderly duloxetine and TCAs produce the largest clinical response and remission rates, with relatively favourable withdrawal rates for duloxetine.