Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a debilitating and often recurrent psychiatric illness that impacts the lives of millions. Approximately 20 percent of individuals will experience at least one depressive episode during their lives, and the high rates of chronic morbidity (depressive episodes typically last for several months) and mortality (owing to suicide) attributed to this disorder consti...

BACKGROUND There is increasing evidence that glial cells play a role in the pathomechanisms of mood disorders and the mode of action of antidepressant drugs. METHODS To examine whether there is a direct effect on the expression of different genes encoding proteins that have been implicated in the pathophysiology of affective disorders, primary astrocyte cell cultures from rats were treated wi...

Long known for their mood altering effects, cannabinoids are currently under investigation for their therapeutic potential in the treatment of depression. Findings from multiple areas of basic research indicate that this system is indeed a viable target for novel antidepressant drugs. Rodent models of depression have been shown to alter levels of the endogenous cannabinoids and the cannabinoid ...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders. Until the recent discovery of the rapid onset antidepressant action of ketamine, pharmacological treatments for MDD were limited to conventional antidepressant drugs with delayed clinical efficacy. Using a judgement bias task, this study has investigated whether the temporal differences observed in patients woul...

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 ...

Objective: The present study was designed to investigate the putative antidepressant effects of crocin and crocetin, two major active ingredients of Crocus sativus L. (saffron) using mice in two different regimens of acute and sub-acute administration. Material and Methods: In acute treatment, antidepressant-like activities of crocin and crocetin (10, 20 and 40 mg/kg, i.p.) were evaluated using...

OBJECTIVE The study aims to help domestic application units and research institutions improve their research quality of antidepressant clinical tests by studying and analyzing the current status and problems in selecting control drugs during domestic antidepressant clinical tests and illustrating some key problems that should be noted when selecting the control drug in such researches. METHOD...