Background: Maternal major depressive disorder (MDD) has an adverse effect on child development and increases risk for child psychopathology. It is paramount to understand the course of maternal depression during the childhood years particularly before, during, and after pregnancy.
Objective: To follow the course of MDD in women with prior histories of depression followed during an index pregnancy.
Methods: Subjects were women with histories of MDD who had participated in prior prospective, observational studies during pregnancy. In the follow-up, participants completed a structured interview that addressed (1) the course of MDD since their index pregnancy, (2) new psychiatric diagnoses, and (3) the course of MDD and treatment across subsequent pregnancies.
Results: Out of 129 eligible women, 48.8% participated (N = 63) with an average/mean time of 12.9 years (SD = 1.9, 8.8-16.7) elapsed since participation in the prior pregnancy studies. Although approximately one third reported sustained remission from MDD since the pregnancy during which they had been originally followed, of the remaining two thirds of women who reported subsequent depressive episodes, almost one fifth (∼12% of the total sample) endorsed depression more than 50% of the time following their index pregnancy. A total of 6.3% of the women with previous validated diagnoses of MDD reported new diagnoses of bipolar disorder. Women reported similar treatment choices regarding the use of antidepressants during pregnancies subsequent to the one followed in the previous study.
Conclusion: Women with MDD experienced high rates of recurrent depression across the childbearing years. This represents a critical variable for clinical care and research.
Objective: Cognitive impairment occurs throughout the entire course of and affects the work and life of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). The gut microbiota, kynurenine pathway (KP) and inflammatory response may have important roles in the mechanism of cognitive impairment in MDD patients. Consequently, our goal was to investigate the association among the gut microbiota, inflammation, KP, and cognition in MDD.
This report discusses the case of a female in her 80s with treatment-resistant depression and increasing cognitive decline in recent years. The patient had performed normally on mini-mental status exams (MMSE), had unremarkable CT scans, and been diagnosed with pseudodementia. She had been referred to psychiatry and received multiple courses of different antidepressants and mood-stabilizing medications.
Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK. Electronic address:
Background: Early diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses is hampered by the lack of reliable markers. This study used machine learning models to uncover diagnostic and risk prediction markers for eating disorders (EDs), major depressive disorder (MDD), and alcohol use disorder (AUD).
Methods: Case-control samples (aged 18-25 years), including participants with Anorexia Nervosa (AN), Bulimia Nervosa (BN), MDD, AUD, and matched controls, were used for diagnostic classification.
Department of Radiology, Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Functional and Molecular Imaging Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, China; Xiamen Key Laboratory of Psychoradiology and Neuromodulation, Department of Radiology, West China Xiamen Hospital of Sichuan University, Xiamen, Fujian, China. Electronic address:
Introduction: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a debilitating and heterogeneous disease. Many MDD patients experience concurrent anxiety symptoms, often referred to as anxious depression (MDD-ANX). The relationships between network alterations in structural connectivity (SC) and functional connectivity (FC) in MDD and its anxiety-related subtype remain areas that require further investigation.
