A host of conditions have been associated with mild to moderate levels of inflammation in the body. Depression is one of these. Elsewhere in this blog we have discussed the relationship between depression and inflammation, evidence that treatment with an antidepressant (escitalopram) reduces inflammation in depression, and talked about how exercise prevents depression. We have also noted that elevated levels of inflammation (simple …
Depression Therapeutics and Mechanisms
The September 15, 2016 edition of Biological Psychiatry is devoted to updates in the area of psychobiology that relate to depression and its treatment. In this blog post I will summarize some of those studies to give you a sense of what is going on in the field. Some of these studies may not be replicated in follow-up research, but some …
Antidepressants Alter Gene Expression
An interesting study looked at similarities and differences in the effects of two medications that have anti-depressant effects and yet are extremely different in terms of how they work: ketamine and imipramine (a tricyclic antidepressant). This industry supported study looked at the effects of these two agents on a reward circuit (involving the prefrontal cortex (PFC), nucleus accumbens, hippocampus, and amygdala – …
A Better Ketamine
A better ketamine may be coming. That is the conclusion of NEJM Journal Watch Psychiatry reviewer Barbara Geller. A common pathway to identifying new drugs, is looking at metabolites of a medication to see if there is one metabolite that works better than the active drug (desvenlafaxine – one of the metabolites of venlafaxine – may or may not be …
Genetic Tests for Depression Updated 2023
Do Genetic Tests Help? Are genetic tests for depression treatment worthwhile? Or is this an expensive technology that is not ready for routine use? Peter Roy-Byrne, writing in NEJM Journal Watch seems to say that they aren’t worth it. Although some clinicians may argue that such testing “can’t hurt and might help,” current psychopharmacological practice is complex, usually including combinations …
Mindfulness for Depression – Research Update
Mindfulness has received a lot of attention recently as an approach to improving mental health in a number of conditions. But is it really effective as part of a strategy for treating serious depression? And, if so, how can we best incorporate it into treatment, given the great difficulty that many people with depression have doing even a small amount …
Depression and Inflammation
Is depression one of a series of illnesses caused by inflammation? There has been a lot of interest in the last year in the idea that inflammation (activation of the body’s immune system) might be a cause as well as a consequence of depression. One theory suggests that depression might be an inflammatory disorder, rather than a disorder of altered neurotransmitter levels. Certainly …
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Part 1: Acceptance and Willingness
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or ACT, pronounced as the word, not A-C-T) is a comprehensive, empirically driven model developed by Steve Hayes, PhD and colleagues with nearly 200 randomized controlled trials (methodologically sound studies) supporting its efficacy for numerous problems and concerns. I recently attended the Anxiety and Depression Association of America conference in Philadelphia, where I offered a two-hour …
Early intervention for depression helps
In a review of an article published in JAMA Psychiatry in early March 2016, Dr. Steven Dubovsky writes about encouraging findings about treatment efficacy of patients with major depression from a large study in Denmark. In the study, researchers reviewed 10 years worth of national data from the extensive population records capped in Denmark which provides nearly universal access to …
Norepinephrine dopamine and depression
In an elegant set of studies published in February 2016 in Nature Neuroscience the team of Bruno Giros, a researcher at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University, reports the first-ever connection between noradrenergic neurons and vulnerability to depression. The study involved research using probably the most well developed animal model for depression – chronic or …