Traditional antidepressants require many weeks to reveal their therapeutic effects. However, the widely replicated observation that a single subanesthetic dose of the N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptor antagonist ketamine produced meaningful clinical improvement within hours, suggested that rapid-acting antidepressants might be possible. The ketamine studies stimulated a new generation of ...

Antidepressant-Like Effects of Menthol via Dopaminergic System; Using Forced Swimming Test in a Mice Model

BACKGROUND Antidepressant prescribing continues to rise. Contributing factors are increased long-term prescribing and possibly the use of higher selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) doses. AIM To review general practice patients prescribed the same antidepressant long-term (≥2 years) and evaluate prescribing and management pre and post-review. DESIGN AND SETTING Prospective obser...

INTRODUCTION Non-response to an antidepressant monotherapy in unipolar depression is quite common. Therefore strategies for subsequent treatment steps are necessary. However, there is a lack of direct comparisons of these different strategies. In this naturalistic study we compared the outcome to different strategies after failure of the primary antidepressant treatment. METHODS Failure of pr...

F or at least four decades, the field of psychoimmunology has attracted numerous investigators based on diverse hints linking the immune system to emotional behavior. The administration of cytokines for the treatment of various diseases is often associated with depression, which frequently accompanies autoimmune disease. Now, in PNAS, Greengard and colleagues (1) report a specific molecular pat...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate antidepressant like effect of tramadol in mice. MATERIALS AND METHODS Tramadol was administered at three different doses (10,20 and 40 mg/kg, i.p) once daily for 7 days to Swiss albino mice of either sex. The immobility period of control and drug treated mice were recorded in tail suspension test (TST).The antidepressant effect of tramadol was compared to that of fluoxet...

Antidepressant discontinuation syndrome occurs in approximately 20 percent of patients after abrupt discontinuation of an antidepressant medication that was taken for at least six weeks. Typical symptoms of antidepressant discontinuation syndrome include flu-like symptoms, insomnia, nausea, imbalance, sensory disturbances, and hyperarousal. These symptoms usually are mild, last one to two weeks...

OBJECTIVE Antidepressant sales and suicide rates have been shown to be correlated in industrialized countries. The aim was to study the possible effects of psychotherapy utilization on suicide rates. METHOD We assessed the impact of antidepressant sales and psychotherapist density on suicide rates between 1991 and 2005. To adjust for serial correlation in time series, three first-order autore...

Animal and human studies have suggested that antidepressant medications may be associated with several cancers. The authors evaluated the association between antidepressant medication use and the risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma using a Canadian population-based case-control study, the National Enhanced Cancer Surveillance Study. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma cases (n=638) diagnosed in 1995-1996 were id...

OBJECTIVE We validated an algorithm designed to identify new or prevalent users of antidepressant medications via population-based drug prescription records. PATIENTS AND METHODS We obtained population-based drug prescription records for the entire Olmsted County, Minnesota, population from 2011 to 2012 (N=149,629) using the existing electronic medical records linkage infrastructure of the Ro...