Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to the third issue in the year 2010. This issue contains mostly original articles, thus I am pleased to present to you many interesting research findings.
Despite its proven efficacy and safety, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has a negative image and attracts widespread public criticism. In contrast, perceptions of patients who have received ECT appear to be more favourable. Subho Chakrabarti and colleagues from India present a review and provide evidence on knowledge and views concerning ECT among its recipients. Interestingly, it seems that patients undergoing ECT were usually poorly informed about it. Thus, it is suggested to improve the pre-treatment procedures for patients undergoing ECT.
Christine Wiebking and colleagues investigated behavioural and neural correlates of interoception in healthy and depressed subjects using the Body Perception Questionnaire (BPQ) and a well established heartbeat perception task in fMRI. Indeed, the results provide evidence that behavioural and neural abnormalities are closely related to the patients’ somato-vegetative abnormalities and their abnormal “material me”.
Breno Satler Diniz and colleagues from Brazil present a study with 29 elderly subjects with major depression and 42 healthy older adults. All depressed patients were antidepressant-free for at least one month prior to clinical and laboratorial assessments. Serum Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels were determined by sandwich Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The aim of the study was to investigate serum BDNF levels in older depressed patients as compared to healthy elderly controls. The colleagues could provide evidence that reduced serum BDNF level may be a state marker of late-life depression in non-medicated elderly patients. Further, reduced neurotrophic may have an important role in the physiopathology of late-life depression
Abnormalities of brain white matter and oligodendroglia are replicated findings in schizophrenia research. Nadine Farkas and German colleagues studied the numerical density of A Disintegrin and Metallopro-tease (ADAM) 12 expressing oligodendrocytes in postmortem prefrontal brains of patients with haloperidol treated, chronic schizophrenia and matched controls and found evidence that reduced ADAM12 protein contributes to a deviant metabolism of some of its substrates known to be compromised in schizophrenia.
Ultrastructural abnormalities of capillaries and of pericapillary cellular environment found suggest that blood-brain barrier dysfunction might contribute to the pathogenesis of cortical lesions in schizophrenia. Natalya Uranova and Russian colleagues conducted a study with 26 schizophrenia patients and 26 healthy controls and investigated the capillaries in PFC (BA 10) and visual cortex (VC) (BA 17) by electron microscopy and morphometry.
Beata Sebestyen and colleagues from Hungary analysed the relationship between increasing antidepressant utilization and the national suicide rate in Hungary between 1998 and 2006, with particular regard to seasonal patterns and gender differences. During the 9 years of the study period there was a significant correlation between the steadily increasing antidepressant prescription and continuous decline in total national suicide rate as well as both in females and males. Thus, increasing antidepressant utilization can be associated with significantly decreased seasonality of suicides, especially among males.
Despite its clinical importance and relevance for health care policy, the pathways between depression and stress regulation remain poorly understood. Johannes Ehrenthal and German colleagues recorded cardiovascular and autonomic reactions to two different stress tasks including anger recall and mental arithmetic in a sample of 25 severely depressed and 25 non-depressed subjects. The results provide further evidence for altered cardiovascular reactivity and impaired cardiac autonomic functioning in depression. Thus, the authors suggest further research on the psychophysiological response to either more disease-oriented or more personality-oriented stressors.
Serge Brand and colleagues from Switzerland conducted a study with 107 adolescents (of which 70 had experienced intense romantic love and 47 were controls). Participants completed the Hypomania Check List, and data were compared with those of adult out-patients suffering from bipolar II disorders. The aim of the study was to compare hypomania scores of adolescents with those of adult outpatients suffering from bipolar II disorders, and to investigate possible gender-related differences. Indeed the authors could provide evidence that adolescents’ developmental tasks surrounding experiences in social, psychosexual and substance-use-related engagement may lead to temporary and gender-related hypomanic-like stages.
Yours sincerely,
Siegfried Kasper, MD
Chief Editor