Treating adolescents for major depression can also reduce their chances of abusing drugs later on, a secondary benefit found in a five-year study of nearly 200 youths at 11 sites across the United States.
Only 10 percent of 192 adolescents whose depression receded after 12 weeks of treatment later abused drugs, compared to 25 percent of those for whom treatment did not work, according to research led by John Curry, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.
“It turned out that whatever they responded to — cognitive behavioral therapy, Prozac, both treatments, or a placebo — if they did respond within 12 weeks they were less likely to develop a drug-use disorder,” Curry said.
The study found no such relationship when it came to thwarting alcohol abuse, however.
The researchers followed nearly half the 439 participants from the “Treatment for Adolescents with Depression Study” (TADS; 2000-2003), led by Dr. John March, chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center. TADS is considered the largest sample of adolescents who had been treated for major depression. (https://trialweb.dcri.duke.edu/tads/overview.html)
The participants analyzed by Curry’s study were ages 17-23 at the end of the five-year follow-up study and had no preexisting problems with abusing alcohol or drugs. [continue reading…]
Several weeks after mild brain ischemia, mice display a depressive-like syndrome characterized by increased anxiety, inactivity and “cheerlessness”. These symptoms of depression following a stroke are associated with the delayed loss of nerve cells in the brain’s reward regions. This is the major finding of a study published in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry.
Scientists at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin collaborating with researchers from Bochum, Magdeburg and Boston were able to show that delayed treatment of laboratory mice with cipramil, an antidepressant of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) family, not only prevented the development of depression, but also attenuated the subacute degeneration of nerve cells in the brain’s reward system after stroke. At the same time, the area in the brain directly affected by the stroke turned out to be smaller in those mice which had received the antidepressant. “These results indicate that antidepressants from the SSRI group protect nerve cells. This effect can also be harnessed even when medication is started days after the stroke,” explains psychiatrist Prof. Golo Kronenberg, who works on the subject of “Depression after Stroke” at the Center for Stroke Research Berlin (CSB) at Charité. [continue reading…]
Commonly prescribed anti-depressants appear to be doing patients more harm than good, say researchers who have published a paper examining the impact of the medications on the entire body.
“It’s important because millions of people are prescribed anti-depressants each year, and the conventional wisdom about these drugs is that they’re safe and effective.”
“We need to be much more cautious about the widespread use of these drugs,” says Paul Andrews, an evolutionary biologist at McMaster University and lead author of the article, published today in the online journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Andrews and his colleagues examined previous patient studies into the effects of anti-depressants and determined that the benefits of most anti-depressants, even taken at their best, compare poorly to the risks, which include premature death in elderly patients.
Anti-depressants are designed to relieve the symptoms of depression by increasing the levels of serotonin in the brain, where it regulates mood. The vast majority of serotonin that the body produces, though, is used for other purposes, including digestion, forming blood clots at wound sites, reproduction and development.
What the researchers found is that anti-depressants have negative health effects on all processes normally regulated by serotonin.
The findings include these elevated risks:
developmental problems in infants
problems with sexual stimulation and function and sperm development in adults
digestive problems such as diarrhea, constipation, indigestion and bloating
A new blood test diagnoses major depression in teens—an approach that offers an objective diagnosis by measuring a specific set of genetic markers.
The current method of diagnosing depression is subjective. It relies on the patient’s ability to recount his or her symptoms and the physician’s ability and training to interpret them.
Diagnosing teens is an urgent concern because they are highly vulnerable to depression and difficult to accurately diagnose due to normal mood changes during this age period.
The test also is the first to identify subtypes of depression. It distinguished between teens with major depression and those with major depression combined with anxiety disorder. This is the first evidence that it’s possible to diagnose subtypes of depression from blood, raising the hope for tailoring care to the different types.
“Right now depression is treated with a blunt instrument,” says Eva Redei, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and lead investigator of the study, published in Translational Psychiatry.
“It’s like treating type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes exactly the same way. We need to do better for these kids.
“This is the first significant step for us to understand which treatment will be most effective for an individual patient,” adds Redei. “Without an objective diagnosis, it’s very difficult to make that assessment. The early diagnosis and specific classification of early major depression could lead to a larger repertoire of more effective treatments and enhanced individualized care.” [continue reading…]
A new blood test diagnoses major depression in teens—an approach that offers an objective diagnosis by measuring a specific set of genetic markers.