Pharmacological treatment of depressive disorders is characterized by poor predictability of individual response. In recent years, the increasing evidence has demonstrated that genetic factors play a critical role in determining the differences in treatment outcome to antidepressant drugs. A number of pharmacogenetic studies on antidepressant drugs has been conducted, and genetic variations at ...

BACKGROUND It is widely believed that in randomized controlled trials of antidepressants the difference between drug and placebo response rates is rather small (around 20%), leading to a common perception that antidepressants have limited efficacy. AIM The aim of the present paper was to present an alternative calculation and interpretation of antidepressant-placebo difference in the treatmen...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of filiform needle acupuncture for poststroke depression, and to compare acupuncture with the therapeutic efficacy of antidepressant drugs. DATA RETRIEVAL We retrieved data from the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (1979-2012), Wanfang (1980-2012), VIP (1989-2012), Chinese Biomedical Literature (1975-2012), PubMed (1966-2012), Ovid L...

OBJECTIVE (1) To determine the prevalence of antidepressant utilisation before, during, and after pregnancy, (2) to determine switches, dosages, and classes of antidepressant used during pregnancy, and (3) to identify factors associated with their use at the beginning and at the end of pregnancy. DESIGN Retrospective longitudinal cohort. SETTING The 'Medication and Pregnancy' cohort was use...

In the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, cell birth and maturation into neurons, or neurogenesis, occur throughout the lifetime of animals and humans. Multiple factors have been shown to regulate adult neurogenesis, and a number of findings in this field have had a large impact on basic and clinical research in depression. It has been reported that both physical and psychosocial stress paradigm...

Effective pharmacological management of depression resistant to antidepressant medication is best carried out in the context of a supportive and collaborative relationship, following a mutually agreed care plan. Simpler pharmacological approaches such as switching antidepressant classes are tried first, then augmentation is used if needed. New classes of antidepressants have made antidepressant...

OBJECTIVE Antidepressant drugs can cause drug-induced liver injury (DILI). The authors review clinical data relevant to antidepressant-induced liver injury and provide recommendations for clinical practice. METHOD A PubMed search was conducted for publications from 1965 onward related to antidepressant-induced liver injury. The search terms were "liver injury," "liver failure," "DILI," "hepat...

Major depression is believed to be a multifactorial disorder involving predisposing temperament and personality traits, exposure to traumatic and stressful life events, and biological susceptibility. Depression, both unipolar and bipolar, is a "phasic" disease. Stressful life events are known to trigger depressive episodes, while their influence seems to decrease over the course of the illness....

Results of studies of drug self-administration have frequently been suggested as indicators of the potential for abuse of these drugs by humans. Historical data (pre 1970), although scant, supported this suggestion for drugs such as morphine and ethanol that served as reinforcers in both human and non-human experimental subjects. More recent information indicated that, while the correlation bet...

We present a method of prioritizing potential drug targets based on their gene expression “signature”. Primary human pre-cursor neuronal cells were treated with three classes (antidepressant, antipsychotic, opiod receptor agonist) of psychoactive drugs for 24 hours. Microarray technology was used to capture expression of ~11, 000 genes induced by these three categories of drugs. It was demonstr...