Ohio ? Suicides among U.S. teens and adolescents dropped in 2005 after a sharp rise the previous year, but the number still remained high compared with historical trends, researchers said Monday.

The youth suicide rate had been falling steadily for a decade but shot upward by 18 percent in 2004, boosted, according to some experts, by a government warning about antidepressants that led patients to stop taking the drugs.

The latest study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that the panic triggered by the warning has subsided and patients are being treated with antidepressants or other therapies.

Despite the decrease in suicides, researchers cautioned that the trend is still clearly upward.

“It is certainly cause for concern,” said Robert D. Gibbons, a biostatistician at the University of Illinois at Chicago who was not involved in the report.

Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh analyzed data from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.