By Jim Dryden
October 12, 2001
Neuroscientists at the School of Medicine and Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., are launching a study they hope will help clarify the mind-body connection in older people with depression.The study, funded by a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, hopes to learn whether physical illness can increase depression risk.
"We know, for instance, that the same factors that increase stroke risk also increase risk for depression in older people," said principal investigator Yvette I. Sheline, M.D., associate professor of psychiatry, neurology and radiology at the medical school. "We want to learn whether brain lesions increase the risk of clinical depression and affect the treatment outcome."
Past studies have shown that older patients with depression tend to have abnormal lesions in frontal brain structures. Similar lesions show up in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of stroke patients and others with chronic physical illness.
The researchers will study 320 patients who have had bouts of depression in later life. Many also will have other medical illnesses. All will receive MRI scans to help the researchers learn whether it is possible to correlate brain lesions with depression risk and whether patients with more lesions get more depressed or have depression that is harder to treat with commonly prescribed drugs.
"We'll be studying many patients who, because of their medical illnesses, often are not eligible to participate in other studies of depression," Sheline said. "In those studies, the goal is to isolate the causes and effects of depression, apart from any influences of medical illness. In this study, we hope to learn about the interaction between the two."
The investigators are recruiting people age 60 and older who currently have depression. All patients will receive a medical evaluation, psychological testing and study medications free of charge. Every study patient will be placed on active treatment for depression; no volunteers will receive an inactive placebo. Each person in the study also will undergo an MRI brain scan.
For more information about the study or to volunteer, call study coordinator Pat Deppen at 362-6737.