Antidepressant News and Research

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Antidepressants are medicines that treat depression. Your doctor can prescribe them for you. They can improve your mood, sleep, appetite and concentration. It may take several weeks for them to help. There are several types of antidepressants. You and your doctor may have to try several before finding what works best for you.

Study finding suggests importance of individually-tailored treatment for depression

The most commonly used treatment for the over 14 million Americans who suffer from Major Depressive Disorder is anti-depressant medication. While such medications bring relief to many, current research suggests that one size may not fit all when it comes to treating depression.

12 Mar 2015

Men with borderline testosterone levels have higher rates of depression, new research finds

Men with borderline testosterone levels have higher rates of depression and depressive symptoms than the general population, new research finds.

9 Mar 2015

Screening for and treating depression could help reduce risk of heart disease

A new study by researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute has found that screening for and treating depression could help to reduce the risk of heart disease in patients with moderate to severe depression.

6 Mar 2015

GeneSight test better predicts antidepressant outcomes for patients with depression

The combinatorial, multi-gene GeneSight test has been found to better predict antidepressant treatment outcomes for patients with depression, and their use of health care resources, than any of the individual genes that comprise the test, according to a peer-reviewed analysis by investigators from the Mayo Clinic and Assurex Health, and published online by The Pharmacogenomics Journal.

5 Mar 2015

Common antidepressant medications not helpful for people with mood, anxiety disorders

Studies indicate that the majority of people with mood and anxiety disorders who receive the most commonly prescribed class of antidepressant medications, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors or SSRI's, are not helped by these medications. SSRIs are designed to increase serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain that is key to maintenance of mood.

4 Mar 2015

Extending use of bupropion before quitting reduces smoking behavior

Smokers may be more likely to successfully quit their habit if simple adjustments were made to how an existing anti-smoking medication is prescribed, according to a new study by a University at Buffalo research team.

3 Mar 2015

Mice genetically deficient in serotonin are more vulnerable to social stressors

Mice genetically deficient in serotonin -- a crucial brain chemical implicated in clinical depression -- are more vulnerable than their normal littermates to social stressors, according to a Duke study appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

10 Feb 2015

Johns Hopkins student wins NCRC's 2015 Grand Prize

The National Collegiate Research Conference sponsored by the Harvard College Undergraduate Research Association awarded its 2015 Grand Prize to Mahima Sukumar, an undergraduate student at The Johns Hopkins University, working in the lab of Keri Martinowich, Ph.D., at the Lieber Institute for Brain Development.

5 Feb 2015

Brain scans can predict therapeutic responses to talk therapy

UNC School of Medicine researchers have shown that brain scans can predict which patients with clinical depression are most likely to benefit from a specific kind of talk therapy.

4 Feb 2015

Atypical features common in bipolar disorder subtypes, associated with therapy

Atypical features are prevalent in all subtypes of bipolar disorder, a Chinese survey published in Neuroscience Bulletin, shows, and are associated with the use of antidepressant medication in patients with mixed stage and remission subtypes.

30 Jan 2015

Brain inflammation linked to clinical depression

A new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health found that the measure of brain inflammation in people who were experiencing clinical depression was increased by 30 per cent. The findings, published today in JAMA Psychiatry, have important implications for developing new treatments for depression.

28 Jan 2015

New survey finds long-term benefits of brain surgery in patients with epilepsy

Brain surgery for otherwise hard-to-treat epilepsy is effective for up to 15 years, according to a new survey by Henry Ford Hospital physicians.

28 Jan 2015

Neurobiologists find paradoxical effect of abuse-related cues in infants, adults

Neurobiologists at NYU Langone Medical Center and elsewhere have found a surprising and paradoxical effect of abuse-related cues in rat pups: those cues also can lower depressive-like behavior when the rat pups are fully grown.

14 Jan 2015

Different antidepressants may affect pregnant women differently

About 15 percent of women in the United States suffer from anxiety disorders and depression during their pregnancies, and many are prescribed antidepressants. However little is known about how early exposure to these medications might affect their offspring as they mature into adults.

23 Dec 2014

People with severe dementia who live in community settings show more signs of depression

Researchers studied 414 people with severe dementia along with their carers in England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. The study gathered information on quality of life, activities of daily living such as bathing, feeding and dressing and presence of depressive symptoms using standardised measures.

From The University of Manchester 17 Dec 2014

Sensitive toxicity test aims to detect dangerous side effects in pharmaceutical development

Because of undetected toxicity problems, about a third of prescription drugs approved in the U.S. are withdrawn from the market or require added warning labels limiting their use. An exceptionally sensitive toxicity test invented at the University of Utah could make it possible to uncover more of these dangerous side effects early in pharmaceutical development so that fewer patients are given unsafe drugs.

16 Dec 2014

Laughing gas could be used as treatment for severe depression

Nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, has shown early promise as a potential treatment for severe depression in patients whose symptoms don't respond to standard therapies. The pilot study, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is believed to be the first research in which patients with depression were given laughing gas.

10 Dec 2014

Low doses of fluoxetine could hold key to preventing PMS symptoms

Low doses of fluoxetine - better known as the anti-depressant Prozac - could hold the key to preventing PMS symptoms, an international team of researchers has found.

8 Dec 2014

People with first-episode psychosis may benefit from medication treatment changes, study finds

Many patients with first-episode psychosis receive medications that do not comply with recommended guidelines for first-episode treatment, researchers have found. Current guidelines emphasize low doses of antipsychotic drugs and strategies for minimizing the side effects that might contribute to patients stopping their medication.

5 Dec 2014

Advanced prebiotic Bimuno has ability to reduce anxiety

Clasado Biosciences Limited, the producers and suppliers of the second generation prebiotic Bimuno (B-GOS), a unique trans-galactooligosaccharide, and the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, today announce the results of clinical research demonstrating for the first time that an advanced prebiotic (Bimuno) has the ability to reduce anxiety.

4 Dec 2014