Seroquel XR Approved as an Add-On Treament for Major Depressive Disorder.

The AP ( 12/4 http://tinyurl.com/seroquel-xr-mdd) reported Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca PLC has won U.S. approval for use of its schizophrenia drug Seroquel XR as an add-on treament for major depressive disorder.  But the London-based company said that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asked for more information before allowing the drug’s use as a single agent to treat major depressive disorder, or MDD.  Seroquel XR is an extended-release version of AstraZeneca’s schizophrenia medication Seroquel, a major seller for the company. It is already approved for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.  AstraZeneca said it is evaluating the FDA’s request.  “AstraZeneca will continue discussions with the FDA and will provide a response to the agency in due course,” it said in a statement.

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Dopamine Affects the Pleasure the Brain Expects From Future Events.

Time (http://tinyurl.com/dopamine-and-decisions 11/27, Cloud) reported that, “by tinkering with levels of dopamine in the brain, researchers were able to influence people’s future decisions in a reliable, predictable way.” In a study of “61 healthy volunteers,” scientists from the Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging at University College London discovered that “when dopamine is present during an imagined event…it still influences how much pleasure the brain will expect from it in the future.”  Most importantly, “the presence of dopamine didn’t make participants feel any happier at the time they took it.”

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Depression, Other Conditions may Increase With Global Warming.

Bloomberg News (http://tinyurl.com/global-warming-and-depression 11/20, Efstathiou) reports that “kidney stones, malaria, Lyme disease, depression and respiratory illness all may increase with global warming, researchers at Harvard Medical School said.” Bloomberg adds, “Climate change from the burning of fossil fuels will add to risks to public health, said Paul Epstein, associate director of Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment in Boston.” Today, “the center and groups led by the American Medical Association are presenting data at a briefing…in Washington as a call for action to curb emissions.”

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Depressed People May Report More Physical Symptoms Than Actually Experienced.

HealthDay (http://tinyurl.com/depression-pain 11/3, Preidt) reported that, according to a study published online Oct. 15 in Psychosomatic Medicine, “depressed people tend to report more physical symptoms than they actually experience.” Researchers evaluated “109 women who completed questionnaires designed to assess their levels of neuroticism and depression.” Three weeks later, the investigators found that women “who had a higher depression score at the start of the study were more likely to overstate the frequency of their symptoms.”

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Increased Likelihood for Depression Linked to Later Sunrise.

The Los Angeles Times(10/26, Dennis) “Booster Shots” blog ( http://tinyurl.com/sunrise-and-depression) reported at on Sunday, Nov. 1, daylight savings time comes to an end. Interestingly, “its end has little to do with seasonal-affective disorder or winter blues.” Daylight savings time, “which was supposed to give people extra light later in the day, can actually make them feel less sunny.” According to Michael Terman, MD, of New York-Presbyterian Hospital’s Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms, light exposure in the early morning is what “allays the symptoms of winter depression,” so “the later the sun rises, the more likely we are to get depressed.”

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Antidepressants May Work Immediately to Elevate Mood and Alleviate Depression

BBC News (10/26, Roberts) reports that, according to research (http://tinyurl.com/antidepressants-work-fast) published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, “antidepressants get to work immediately to lift mood,” even though “patients may not notice the effects until months into the therapy.” Researchers from the UK’s Oxford University “closely studied the reactions of 33 depressed patients and 31 healthy controls given either an antidepressant or a” placebo, finding that “depressed patients who took the active” medicine “showed positive improvements in three specific measures within three hours of taking them.” In an accompanying editorial psychiatrist Michael Thase, MD, characterized the study’s findings as “potentially ‘paradigm-changing,'” but called for further research.

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Psychiatric Illnesses May Share Common Genetic Variant.

Medwire (10/23, Davenport) reports, “Disrupted in schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) gene variants play a role in the development of psychiatric illness yet there is significant heterogeneity in clinically relevant variants between populations,” according to a study  (http://tinyurl.com/DISC1-gene) in Molecular Psychiatry. “Although schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder (BD), major depression, autism, and Asperger syndrome have all been linked to DISC1, no actual causal variants have been identified.” But, after genotyping study participants “for the presence of 75 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the translin-associated protein X and DISC1 genes,” investigators discovered that “rs1538979 SNP was significantly associated with BD I males” and “the rs821577 SNP was significantly linked with BD females…at odds ratios of 2.73 and 1.64, respectively.”

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Depression may be common in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis, research suggests.

MedWire (10/9, Cowen) reports that, according to research presented at an otolaryngology meeting, “depression is a common and under-recognized comorbid disorder in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS).” Researchers from the Oregon Health and Science University “studied 73 adults with chronic rhinosinusitis who completed…a screening instrument for depressive disorders and a measure of depression severity.” The team also assessed patients’ “disease-specific and general quality of life (QoL).” The investigators discovered that even though “just 9.6 percent of patients reported a history of depression, 20.5 percent met criteria for major depressive disorder.” Moreover, “disease-specific QoL was significantly worse in patients with depressive symptoms than in those without, as were seven of eight measures of general QoL.”

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Researchers develop models to predict postpartum depression.

HealthDay (9/23, Dotinga) reported that researchers from Spain’s Polytechnic University of Valencia claim to have “developed ways to detect 80 percent of cases of postpartum depression.” The team “examined records on 1,397 Spanish women who gave birth in an 11-month span in seven hospitals,” then “devised several models” to “predict whether a woman will develop depression within a few weeks after giving birth.” The investigators did so by “examining risk factors that are linked to postnatal depression, including previous psychiatric problems in the family, the level of social support for the mother, and the state of genes connected to the condition.”

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Neurogenesis-based compound promising for treatment of MDD, researchers say.

Medscape (9/21, Brauser) reported that, according to a study presented at a medical conference, “a neurogenesis-based platform may be leading the way in helping to identify new treatments for depression.” A team from the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital evaluated “the efficacy of” the neurogenic compound called “BCI-952 for the treatment of MDD” by randomly assigning a “total of 134 patients with” major depressive disorder “to receive the BCI-952 combination (n = 67), buspirone alone (n = 34), or placebo (n = 33) during a six-week period.” At study end, they found that “the mean CGI-I scores were statistically significant for those treated with BCI-952 compared with those treated with placebo,” and “the responders’ analysis for CGI-I…demonstrated a higher response rate for BCI-952, at 58 percent vs. 38 percent for buspirone alone,” and “36 percent for placebo.”

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