BACKGROUND Antipsychotic-induced metabolic adversities are often difficult to manage. Using concomitant medications to counteract these adversities may be a rational option. OBJECTIVE To systematically determine the effectiveness of medications to counteract antipsychotic-induced metabolic adversities in patients with schizophrenia. DATA SOURCES Published articles until November 2013 were s...

BACKGROUND We investigated the differential effects of serotonergic and noradrenergic antidepressants on brain activation in patients with major depressive disorder during a Stroop task. We predicted that pretreatment hyperactivity in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex would predict better treatment outcomes. METHODS In total, 20 patients underwent naturalistic open-label clinical treatmen...

Over the last decades, several computational (in silico) methods have been developed and applied to test pharmacological hypotheses. An important hypothesis is that the therapeutic activity of many commonly used antidepressants may be partially mediated through the inhibition of different nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs). This is based on pathologic conditions where the activity of th...

BACKGROUND Dose equivalence of antidepressants is critically important for clinical practice and for research. There are several methods to define and calculate dose equivalence but for antidepressants, only daily defined dose and consensus methods have been applied to date. The purpose of the present study is to examine dose equivalence of antidepressants by a less arbitrary and more systemati...

(S,S)-2-(alpha-(2-Methoxyphenoxy)benzyl)morpholine (MeNER), an O-methyl analog of the selective and potent norepinephrine transporter (NET) inhibitor, (S,S)-reboxetine, and its less active enantiomer, (R,R)-MeNER, have each been radiolabeled by O-methylation of their corresponding phenolic precursors in good yields from [(11)C]methyl iodide or [(11)C]methyl triflate. Radiochemical purities were...

OBJECTIVE To determine effectiveness and cost-effectiveness over a one-year time horizon of pharmacological first line treatment in primary care for patients with moderate to severe depression. DESIGN A multiple treatment comparison meta-analysis was employed to determine the relative efficacy in terms of remission of 10 antidepressants (citalopram, duloxetine escitalopram, fluoxetine, fluvox...

INTRODUCTION Antiepileptic-antidepressant combinations are frequently used by clinicians; their pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) drug interactions (DIs) have not been well studied but are frequently likely to be clinically relevant. AREAS COVERED This article provides a comprehensive review of PK DIs between antiepileptics and antidepressants. In the absence of PD DI studies, PD ...

OBJECTIVES This study was conducted to review systematically adjunctive treatments for weight reduction in patients with schizophrenia and compare efficacies of clinical trials through meta-analysis, so as to provide effective clinical guideline regarding weight control for patients taking atypical antipsychotics. METHODS Candidate clinical trials were identified through searching the Cochran...

Antidepressant drugs are thought to counteract effects of hypercortisolemia, frequently associated with depression, by lowering cortisol level and by modifying the function of glucocorticoid receptors (GR). Indeed, classical antidepressants inhibit corticosteroid-induced gene transcription in cell cultures. The aim of the present study was to investigate effects of new generation antidepressant...

Converging evidence points to adaptive changes in neuroplasticity and gene expression as mediators of therapeutic action of antidepressants. Activation of cAMP response-element binding protein (CREB) and CREB-regulating signalling are considered main effectors in these mechanisms. We analysed the temporal profile of intracellular changes induced by antidepressants, by measuring activation of ma...