Depression Treatment: Acid-Sensing Ion Channel 1: A Novel Therapeutic Target for Migraine With Aura.

Acid-sensing ion channel 1: A novel therapeutic target for migraine with aura.

Filed under: Depression Treatment

Ann Neurol. 2012 Oct; 72(4): 559-63
Holland PR, Akerman S, Andreou AP, Karsan N, Wemmie JA, Goadsby PJ

Migraine with aura is a severe debilitating neurological disorder with few relatively specific therapeutic options.We used amiloride, a blocker of epithelial sodium channels, to evaluate its pharmacological potential and explored the biology of a potential mechanism of action in well-established experimental models.Amiloride was shown to block cortical spreading depression, the experimental correlate of aura, and inhibited trigeminal activation in in vivo migraine models, via an acid-sensing ion channel 1 mechanism. Remarkably, amiloride then demonstrated good clinical efficacy in a small open-labeled pilot study of patients, reducing aura and headache symptoms in 4 of 7 patients with otherwise intractable aura.The observations here identify an entirely novel treatment strategy for migraine. ANN NEUROL 2012;72:559-563.
HubMed – depression

[Agreement of clinical diagnosis, structured interviews, and self-report questionnaires for depression in children and adolescents].

Filed under: Depression Treatment

Z Kinder Jugendpsychiatr Psychother. 2012 Nov; 40(6): 405-14
Dolle K, Schulte-Körne G, von Hofacker N, Izat Y, Allgaier AK

Objective: The present study examines the agreement of structured child and parent interviews as well as clinical diagnosis for depressive episodes in children and adolescents. Moreover, it compares the accuracy and optimal cutoff scores of self-report questionnaires with reference to each of these diagnostic assessments. Method: 81 children (9-12 years) and 88 adolescents (13-16 years) in psychiatric care and their parents completed the structured diagnostic interview Kinder-DIPS. The children answered the German Children’s Depression Inventory (CDI), and the adolescents answered the German Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Kappa coefficients quantified the agreement. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to determine optimal cutoff scores, sensitivity, specificity, as well as positive and negative predictive values. Results: The agreement between the child and parent interviews as well as between the interviews and clinical diagnosis was low to moderate. Clinicians diagnosed depressive episodes more frequently than the interviews. Cutoff scores and measures of accuracy varied between the reference standards, with less favorable results for clinical diagnosis. Conclusions: Clinicians may profit from conducting structured interviews. Strategies for dealing with conflicting information from children and parents should be tested empirically and described in detail.
HubMed – depression

[In Process Citation].

Filed under: Depression Treatment

Z Kinder Jugendpsychiatr Psychother. 2012 Nov; 40(6): 399-404
Hoffmann F, Petermann F, Glaeske G, Bachmann CJ

Objective: Data on the prevalence of depressive disorders in adolescents are scarce. We aimed to examine the administrative prevalence of depressive disorders and related comorbidities in German adolescents. A second objective of was to assess potential regional (East vs. West Germany) differences in depression prevalence. Method: Data of a statutory health insurance company were analysed and outpatients from 12 to 18 years of age with diagnosed depression during a one-year-period (2009) were identified. Results: The population at risk consisted of 140,563 adolescents. Of these, 4,295 (41.2% male; mean age: 15.5 years) had a diagnosis of depression. This equates to a prevalence of 3.1% (females: 3.7%, males: 2.5%). There were no significant differences between East and West Germany. Of all adolescents with depression, 62.5% had at least one comorbid psychiatric diagnosis, with anxiety and emotional disorders (23.7%), somatoform disorders (16.8%), hyperkinetic disorders (16.2%) and posttraumatic stress disorder (10.0%) being most frequently diagnosed. Conclusions: The depression prevalence in this sample was lower than that in studies of clinical samples. There was a marked prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities, especially of internalizing disorders. In adolescents, the risk of depression seems to be comparable in both East and West Germany.
HubMed – depression

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