Active clinical trials for "Depressive Disorder"

To understand how depression leads to congestive heart failure (CHF) in older adults.

The primary objective of this study is to provide duloxetine to investigators for the treatment of patients who have previously participated in neuroscience duloxetine clinical trials and for whom effective alternative therapy is not available.

Anxiety in children of parents with major depressive disorder (MDD) poses a particularly high risk for later-life MDD. In adults, MDD involves dysfunction in prefrontal brain regions that regulate attention to emotional stimuli. These abnormalities: i) have been found primarily in adults with specific familial forms of MDD; ii) persist after recovery from MDD, and iii) relate to anxiety. These findings raise the possibility that risk for MDD is tied to dysfunction in prefrontal regions involved in regulation of emotion, which possibly manifests as early-life anxiety. If this possibility were confirmed in never-depressed adolescents at high risk for MDD, the findings would provide key insights into the developmental neurobiology of MDD. The goal of this protocol is to study the neural substrate of risk for MDD in young people. This protocol tests the hypothesis that adolescents at high risk for MDD by virtue of childhood anxiety and parental history of MDD exhibit dysfunction in prefrontal cortex and amygdala, regions involved in emotion regulation. This goal will be accomplished through fMRI studies of emotion regulation in high and low-risk adolescents. For this research, at-risk adolescents will be recruited from participants in an NIMH-funded extramural study at New York University (NYU) examining the biology of risk for anxiety and depressive disorders. Over a three-year period, 45 high-risk probands and 60 low-risk comparisons will be studied, including 20 comparisons from the NYU sample and 40 from the Washington DC metropolitan area. In the present protocol, to be conducted at NIH, subjects will undergo volumetric MRI scans to assess structural abnormalities in the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe. They will complete a series of four out-of-scanner cognitive tasks and two fMRI-based cognitive tasks that measure modulation of attention to emotional stimuli. The fMRI tasks are hypothesized to differentially engage the prefrontal cortex and amygdala in low vs. high risk subjects. These tasks will be used to test the hypothesis that at-risk individuals exhibit enhanced amygdala and reduced prefrontal activation on the fMRI emotion/attention tasks.

Bereavement refers to the expected reactions and sadness associated with the loss of a loved one. It has been reported that the loss of a spouse is rated as the major life stressor among survivors of varying ages and diverse cultural backgrounds. Statistics have shown that in the United States over 800,000 men and women lose a spouse each year. A wide range of symptoms has been associated with bereavement including; depressed mood, tearfulness, sleep disturbances, and irrational behavior. Previous studies have shown that up to 50% of bereaved individuals can develop major depression. Bereavement has also been associated with dysfunction of the immune system. As a result, bereaved adults are more vulnerable to infection. However, the exact relationship between bereavement and immunity is uncertain. Researchers firmly believe that a relationship does exist between stress, more specifically bereavement, immunity, and the increased chance of dying following the loss of a long-term spouse. The objective of this study is to find possible links between bereavement, depression, and the immune system. This study will follow a group of elderly bereaved spouses and a group of elderly people who have not lost a long-term spouse. The group of bereaved individuals will be followed for approximately 13 months after the loss of their spouse and the group of controls will be followed for 13 months after entering the study. Researchers will make note of any clinical, biological, and immunological changes in any participants of the study.

Depression is a psychiatric disorder that affects mood, thoughts and is usually accompanied by physical annoyances. It affects the person's eating habits, his sleep, the way he sees himself and the way he thinks and understands. Depressed emotion has great tension, lasts longer and leads to a reduction in the person's functioning in many areas of his life. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is the psychiatric disorder characterized by a multitude of diverse organic responses as well as a generalized, persistent and indeterminate anxiety that covers almost all of the individual's activities. It is a diffuse and intense negative mood and anxiety that is present for most of the day and whose exact causes are often undetectable.

The purpose of this study is to determine differences between the immune responses in healthy and depressed people. Participants will receive the influenza vaccine and their responses will be monitored. This study will recruit 15 healthy and 60 depressed participants.

The purpose of this study is to describe the epidemiology of Treatment Resistant Depression (TRD) in the US, including the population incidence of TRD, and TRD as a proportion of Pharmacologically Treated Depression (PTD), and stratify the estimates by sex and age group, with separate estimates for the Medicaid population, the Medicare population, and the privately insured population. Anonymized participants data will be used for the analysis.

Study TRD subjects' resistance to at least 2 different antidepressants, we hypothesize that because of their significant depression and treatment resistant status they are most likely to exhibit BSMN pathway abnormalities.

the aim of this study is to assess whether increased ferritin after intravenous iron therapy will lead to increased prevalence of major depression among treated patients.

The study investigates the influence of inflammatory processes on the development and the course of uni- and bipolar depression. It is assumed, that the concentrations of certain inflammatory proteins have an influence on the development of depression, its clinical severity, the response to treatment and the risk of relapse. To verify this hypothesis, a total of 145 patients, which were hospitalized für treatment of a depressive disorder in the study centers in Germany, Italy and France, were screened according to the criteria set out in the study protocol. Finally, 104 patients with moderate to severe depressive symptoms were included in the study. These patients were treated according to the recommendations of the DGPPN treatment guidelines. All patients received a medication with sertraline or venlafaxine during the study, starting at baseline. The patients were examined for the presence and severity of depressive symptoms at the time of study enrollment, as well as after 4 and 8 weeks, using standardized clinical test procedures. In addition blood was taken. In the serum of the patients, the concentrations of specific inflammatory proteins were measured using Cytometric Bead Array (CBA) and Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) and then correlated with the clinical data. The investigated proteins include high-sensitivity CRP (C-Reactive-Protein), Interleukin 4, Interleukin 6, Interleukin 12, tumor necrosis factor-α, Eotaxin, Intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (CD54), Interferone-gamma and monocyte chemotactic protein 1 (MCP-1).