Treatment of Catatonia With Ultrabrief Right Unilateral Electroconvulsive Therapy: A Case Series.

Catatonia is a syndrome heterogeneous with regard to presentation and etiology. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) remains the first-line treatment for catatonia. Literature review reveals only a few published case reports on the use of right unilateral (RUL) ECT in catatonia, 1 case report on ultrabrief RUL ECT, and an absence of evidence on the relative effectiveness and tolerability of RUL versus bilateral ECT in treating catatonia.

Changes in heart rate variability of depressed patients after electroconvulsive therapy.

Objective. As few, small studies have examined the impact of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) upon the heart rate variability of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), we sought to confirm whether ECT-associated improvement in depressive symptoms would be associated with increases in HRV linear and nonlinear parameters. Methods.

Sequential multiple-assignment randomized trial design of neurobehavioral treatment for patients with metastatic malignant melanoma undergoing high-dose interferon-alpha therapy.

Background: Interferon-alpha therapy, which is used to treat metastatic malignant melanoma, can cause patients to develop two distinct neurobehavioral symptom complexes: a mood syndrome and a neurovegetative syndrome. Interferon-alpha effects on serotonin metabolism appear to contribute to the mood and anxiety syndrome, while the neurovegetative syndrome appears to be related to interferon-alpha effects on dopamine.

Purpose: Our goal is to propose a design for utilizing a sequential, multiple assignment, randomized trial design for patients with malignant melanoma to test the relative efficacy of drugs that target serotonin versus dopamine metabolism during 4 weeks of intravenous, then 8 weeks of subcutaneous, interferon-alpha therapy.