Pariante - inflammation underlying treatment resistant depresssion

[Marco]

Hardly cutting edge but a reminder of the direction of travel in psychiatry.

Credit where due to Carmine Pariante :

How common Ibuprofen pills can treat your low mood

Paying attention to inflammation also promises to change the way we think about depression generally. ‘It makes depression just a part of what is going on in the whole body,’ explains Professor Pariante.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...n-pills-help-cure-low-mood.html#ixzz4oUDDQACz

 

[Sidereal]

The headline made me chuckle. I recall sitting down for lunch with a colleague about 10 years ago, around the time a big study was published of relative uselessness of SSRIs in treatment-resistant cases. I remember remarking that maybe what they need is ibuprofen, not more psych meds and she said nothing, just looked at me as if I'd said the dumbest thing ever.

 

[Sean]

Shock! Horror!

At least some of what we currently label 'mental' illness, might actually be driven by biological mechanisms.

 

[Woolie]

This research is really a mess.

Depression is generally measured in these studies using self-report scales. These scales include three distinct types of items:
- affective items (questions about your mood and feelings, like whether you feel sad often)
- cognitive items (questions about whether you feel hopeless about the future, bad about yourself, etc.)
- "somatic" or "physiological" items (questions about whether you're tired, have trouble concentrating or trouble sleeping).

Only one set of items significantly improves with anti-inflammatory treatment. Can you guess which one? Yep, its the "somatic" or "physiological" items.

It is very likely that the somatic/physiological items, which are included in self-report scales for prgramtic resasons (they tend to correlate with the "real" depression items), are measuring a lot of things other than depression, and it is these that respond to ant-inflammatories.

What a mess we have got ourselves into with depression, eh!