Antidepressant treatment of caregivers of children with asthma.

Background: Depression is common in caregivers of children with asthma and is associated with increased emergency service utilization for the child's asthma.

Objective: This pilot study examined the impact of antidepressant treatment of depressed caregivers on the caregiver's depression and the child's asthma.

Method: Eight depressed caregivers of children with asthma were given up to 6 months of algorithm-based antidepressant therapy.

Psychiatric symptomatology and disorders in caregivers of children with asthma.

Objective: The prevalence of asthma and asthma-related mortality has increased in recent years. Data suggest an association between psychiatric symptoms in the caregiver and asthma-related hospitalizations in the child. We examined the prevalence of psychiatric symptoms and disorders and their relationship to asthma-related service utilization in caregivers of children hospitalized for asthma.

Switching outpatients with bipolar or schizoaffective disorders and substance abuse from their current antipsychotic to aripiprazole.

Objective: Substance abuse is extremely common in patients with bipolar disorders, although minimal data are available on the treatment of this important clinical population. Aripiprazole is an atypical antipsychotic that is approved for the treatment of mania and that has a novel mechanism of action, acting as a dopamine-2 receptor partial agonist, thereby increasing dopamine release in some parts of the brain and decreasing dopa-mine release in other brain regions. Dopamine release is implicated in substance use, and both dopaminergic agonists and antagonists have been examined for the treatment of substance abuse.

Effect of phenytoin on mood and declarative memory during prescription corticosteroid therapy.

Background: In humans and animals, corticosteroid excess is associated with impairment in declarative memory and changes in hippocampal structure. In animals, phenytoin pretreatment blocks the effects of stress on memory and hippocampal histology, although no studies have examined the use of phenytoin to prevent corticosteroid-associated memory changes in humans. Mood changes are also common with corticosteroids, but few treatment data are available.