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Alterations were found in parts of the brain known as white matter, which contains fibre tracts that enable brain cells to communicate with one another by electrical signals. White matter is a key component of the brain's wiring and its disruption has been linked to problems with emotion processing and thinking skills. The study of more than 3000 people -- the largest of its type to date -- sheds light on the biology of depression and could help in the search for better diagnosis and treatment. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh used a cutting-edge technique known as diffusion tensor imaging to map the structure of white matter. A quality of the matter -- known as white matter integrity -- was reduced in people who reported symptoms indicative of depression. The same changes were not seen in people who were unaffected. Depression is the world's leading cause of disability, affecting around a fifth of UK adults over a lifetime. Symptoms include low mood, exha...

The results, published in the latest  American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry , provide preliminary evidence suggesting ketamine's effectiveness as an antidepressant when delivered in repeated intravenous doses. Led by a team of researchers from UNSW Sydney and Black Dog Institute, the trial tested different doses of ketamine amongst 16 older age participants (aged over 60 years) who had treatment-resistant depression, administered at Wesley Hospital. "These findings take us a big step forward as we begin to fully understand the potential and limitations of ketamine's antidepressant qualities," said lead author UNSW Professor Colleen Loo, who is based at Black Dog Institute. "Not only was ketamine well-tolerated by participants, with none experiencing severe or problematic side effects, but giving the treatment by a simple subcutaneous injection (a small injection under the skin) was also shown to be an acceptable method for administering the drug in a ...

"We know that cannabis use in adolescence is associated with outcomes like lower educational level, and difficulties with mood and depression, but through this long-term study, we've been able to provide a much deeper insight into this relationship, showing that certain characteristics of use may be more important than others," said Erika Forbes, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, psychology and pediatrics, and lead author of the study. "The findings highlight that understanding marijuana use across the entire period of adolescence, which we know is an extremely vulnerable developmental phase, may tell us much more about detrimental long-term impacts than knowing about overall or one time use." Researchers analyzed 158 boys and young men from Pittsburgh who were part of The Pitt Mother & Child Project ( PMCP ), a long-running longitudinal study of males at high risk for antisocial behavior and other psychopathology based on low income, family size and child...

The team studied nearly 400 individuals from birth to adulthood. Half of the participants had been born before 32 weeks gestation or at a very low birth weight (less than 3.3 pounds), and the other half had been born at term and normal birth weight. They assessed each participant when they were 6, 8 and 26 years old using detailed clinical interviews of psychiatric disorders. "Previous research has reported increased risks for anxiety and mood disorders, but these studies were based on small samples and did not include repeated assessments for over 20 years," said Jaekel. Their results? At age 6, children were not at an increased risk of any anxiety or mood disorders, but by age 8 -- after they had entered school -- more children had an anxiety disorder. By 26, there was a tendency to have more mood disorders like depression, but the findings were not meaningfully different between the two groups. This study is the first investigation of anxiety and mood disorders in ...

Led by researchers from UNSW Sydney and Black Dog Institute, the review examined all prior published studies of ketamine treatment for depression, and finds few existing studies effectively report the safety of repeated doses or sustained use. Ketamine research leader UNSW Professor Colleen Loo, who is based at the Black Dog Institute, said these major gaps in the literature must be addressed before ketamine is widely adopted as a clinical treatment for depression. "Despite growing interest in ketamine as an antidepressant, and some preliminary findings suggesting its rapid-acting efficacy, to date this has not been effectively explored over the long term and after repeated dosing," said Professor Loo, a co-author of the study. "As ketamine treatment will likely involve multiple and repeated doses over an extended time period, it is crucial to determine whether the potential side effects outweigh the benefits to ensure it is safe for this purpose." The re...

The increased risk of death from any cause holds true whether the depression immediately follows the heart disease diagnosis or occurs even years later, according to Heidi May, PhD, a cardiovascular epidemiologist at Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute and the study's lead author. She said the findings point out the importance of screening for and treating depression even years after someone is diagnosed with heart disease. The research, one of a number of studies to explore the connection between heart disease and development of depression by researchers at Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute, will be published on July 28 in the  European Heart Journal -- Quality of Care & Clinical Outcomes. Researchers found that post-coronary artery disease depression was the single biggest predictor of death, and remained so even after researchers controlled for the other factors. "No matter how long or how short it was, patients were found to have twice the...

The study examined the longitudinal association between depression and subsequent violence from three representative samples in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Finland. Researchers for these three cohorts used complementary measures of depression, including self-report and clinical diagnoses, and different measurements of violence including informant reports of violence and official convictions for violent crimes. The research team, led by Professor Seena Fazel, from the Forensic Psychiatry Group at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, found modest increases in risk of violence in depression. In absolute terms, for instance, in the Finnish sample, 7.1% of individuals with depression were convicted of one or more violent crimes, compared with 3.6% in the general population without depression . In relative terms, across samples and measurements, the study shows a consistent pattern of increased relative risk of later violence. In the Dutch and UK samples, an increase in d...

"These findings suggest that a patient's quality of life could be impacted by a diagnostic label and their expectations for the prognosis. So, when a clinician discloses the diagnosis and prognosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment or mild stage Alzheimer's disease, a patient may experience additional symptoms, like anxiety or depression," said the study's lead author, Shana Stites, PsyD, MA, MS, a clinical psychologist in the Penn Memory Center, senior research investigator for the Penn Project on Precision Medicine for the Brain (P3MB). For many years, a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease was often not made until a patient had substantial memory and cognitive problems -- by which time patients themselves were often unaware of their diagnosis. Advances in awareness, as well in diagnostic methods, mean doctors are diagnosing Alzheimer's disease earlier, and in the future, routine diagnosis may occur before symptoms even begin. According to Stites, early diagn...

Shortage of serotonin is believed to be a cause of depression. The most common anti-depressant drugs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), including Prozac and Zoloft, which block the absorption of the neurotransmitter serotonin, increasing the amount of serotonin active in the brain at any one time. While SSRIs have been used to treat depression for decades, exactly how they work has been a mystery. Another question was why the behavioral effects are delayed for weeks or months despite of the immediate pharmacological impact. To better understand SSRIs and their effect on the brain, Paul Greengard's lab at Rockefeller University in New York teamed up with Adrien Peyrache, a researcher at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital of McGill University. A few years ago Greengard's lab established that a protein called p11 plays a key role in depression-like behaviours. This protein is strongly expressed in one particular neuronal subclass in the hippoc...

The finding is reported in today's online edition of the journal  Current Biology . "This discovery, which identifies a direct dopamine neuron connection to the circadian center, is possibly the first step toward the development of unique drugs, targeting specific neurons, to combat the unpleasant symptoms of jet-lag and shiftwork, as well as several dangerous pathologies," said Ali Deniz Güler, a UVA professor of biology and neuroscience who oversaw the study in his lab. Modern society often places abnormal pressure on the human body -- from shifting time schedules due to air travel, to work cycles that don't conform to natural light, to odd eating times -- and these external conditions create an imbalance in the body's natural cycles, which are evolutionarily synchronized to day and night. These imbalances may contribute to depression, obesity, cardiovascular diseases and even cancer. "Scientists have been working for decades to help the body's ...