Circadian-related interventions may augment antidepressant responses in patients with bipolar disorder, study suggests.

MedWire (4/24, Davenport) reports that, according to a study published online Apr. 9 in the journal Biological Psychiatry, “adding a combination of noninvasive circadian-related interventions to standard medication in patients with bipolar disorder accelerates, augments, and sustains antidepressant responses.” For the study, researchers from the University of California-Irvine School of Medicine “randomly assigned 49 outpatients with bipolar disorder to receive standard medication alone, or medication plus chronotherapeutic augmentation (CAT), consisting of” sleep deprivation (SD), “bright light therapy,” and “sleep phase advance,” then “assessed” patients “using the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD).” The investigators found that both “at day seven and week seven, significantly more CAT patients than medication patients met the” response criteria, “defined as a 50 percent reduction in HRSD ratings over baseline, while 12 of 19 responders in the CAT group were classified as in remission at the end of week seven.”

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