BACKGROUND Depression is an international public health problem. Impairment in social and occupational functioning, increased comorbidity with other psychiatric and medical conditions, and an increased risk of mortality are a few of its consequences. Some psychiatrists have the impression that selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors may not work as well as tricyclic anti-depressants in severe ...

Considerable variability has been observed in the steady-state plasma concentrations of nortriptyline in psychiatric patients undergoing treatment with the drug (Hammer, Idestrom, and Sjoqvist, 1967). Some patients have been found to have exceptionally high plasma levels forming a mode which was separated from the great majority (Sj6qvist et al, 1968). Nortriptyline (NT) steady-state plasma lev...

With the widespread use of tricyclic antidepressant drugs, the relationship between the concentration of the drug in the plasma and the therapeutic response is of considerable interest. We describe a double-isotope derivative dilution procedure for measuring plasma nortriptyline. In the method, [14C]nortriptyline is used for estimating procedural losses and [3H]acetic anhydride for derivative f...

OBJECTIVE To establish if there is a role for gabapentin or nortriptyline in the treatment of chronic orchialgia. METHODS Twenty-six consecutive patients with chronic orchialgia were seen in the chronic pain clinic by a multidisciplinary team. A pain questionnaire was completed prior to commencing either gabapentin or nortriptyline. They were reviewed at 3 months and a repeat questionnaire co...

Neuritic degeneration and synaptic loss are features of both neuroinflammation and neurodegenerative disease. The tricyclic antidepressant amitriptyline has neurotrophic and anti-inflammatory properties and acts as a novel agonist of the neurotrophin Trk receptors. Primary cortical neurons were treated with amitriptyline, nortriptyline and NGF and tested for neuronal complexity by Sholl analysi...

Plasma levels of tricyclic antidepressant drugs vary considerably between individuals receiving the same amount of drug. The bearing of this variation on the occurrence of subjective side effects was investigated in 40 psychiatric inpatients with depressive disorders. Plasma levels were determined before and during four weeks of treatment with nortriptyline 50 mg. three times a day and patients...

Psychotropics (antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, antidepressants, anxiolytics, etc.) are commonly prescribed to treat Huntington's disease (HD). In HD preclinical models, while no psychotropic has convincingly affected huntingtin gene, HD modifying gene, or huntingtin protein expression, psychotropic neuroprotective effects include upregulated huntingtin autophagy (lithium), histone acetylation...

buprenorphine is a partial mu agonist and kappa antagonist which is used for the treatment of pain and opioid addiction. a mixture of buprenorphine hydrochloride and naloxone hydrochloride has been approved for the treatment of opioid dependence.in this study a third order derivative spectrophotometric method based on zero-crossing technique has been used for the simultaneous determination of b...