Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0011570 (depression)
 172,036 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

In most healthy individuals, dexamethasone suppresses adrenal cortisol production. However, in patients with major depression, non-suppression frequently occurs and thus may be a marker for depression. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship of dexamethasone suppression test (DST) non-suppression to clinical variables such as major depression, site and duration of pain, prior surgery, and medication use in 81 chronic pain patients beginning inpatient pain treatment (Inpt. Pain), and 33 medication-restricted outpatients with chronic back pain and depression (Outpt. Back). In the Inpt. Pain group, the specificity of DST non-suppression for depression was 82% and for sensitivity 24%. In the Outpt. Back group, its sensitivity was 18%. Within the diverse inpatient samples, there was 69% non-suppression in patients with headache pain only, compared to 15% in patients with other sites of pain (P less than 0.01), but there was no significant difference in depression rate between these two groups. In the Inpt. Pain group, non-suppressors also had significantly less prior surgery. In the Outpt. Back group, opioid use was significantly higher in non-suppressors (33%) than in suppressors (11%). In chronic pain populations, the DST appears not to be useful clinically for the detection of depression and may be significantly affected by clinical variables other than depression.
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PMID:Chronic pain, depression, and the dexamethasone suppression test. 159 56

We report data on abdominal pain and depression from a survey of Hispanic Americans by the United States National Center for Health Statistics. The point prevalence rates of chronic abdominal pain were 4.6% in Mexican Americans and 5.8% in Cuban Americans in a total of 4175 subjects. The rate was 8.3% among 1323 Puerto Ricans. In 53% the abdominal pain came in waves. Using the Depression scale of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies (CES-D), 18.7% of Mexican and Cuban Americans with pain were found to be depressed to an extent likely to require intervention, and 40.8% of Puerto Ricans were so affected. The Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) gave more conservative figures for major depression in terms of DSM-III, viz., 6.8% for Mexican and Cuban Americans with chronic pain, and 12.6% for Puerto Ricans with chronic pain. Logistic regression analyses demonstrated links between depression and female sex, the single state, low education and income, and chronic abdominal pain. The most consistent relationships for depression were with chronic pain, female sex and the single state. The results confirm the strong relationships between chronic pain, mood and female gender, and other socio-demographic variables.
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PMID:Chronic abdominal pain and depression. Epidemiologic findings in the United States. Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. 159 84

The possible relationship between a number of biochemical parameters and measures of pain and depression was studied in chronic pain patients without a major depression. In a double-blind crossover study, patients were treated with amitriptyline combined with a low dose of flupentixol or placebo. We investigated whether pretreatment biochemical values correlated with initial data on pain and/or depression, or whether they had predictive value for treatment outcome. We also studied systematically the effect of both treatment regimes on the biochemical parameters themselves and their relation to the plasma levels of amitriptyline. From our results, the possible involvement of the serotonin system in somatoform pain disorder is confirmed and no direct relation with the noradrenergic system could be inferred. The lack of involvement of a number of putative, depression-related, biochemical parameters suggests that affective disorders and pain syndromes do not share all mechanisms in common.
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PMID:Biochemical measures in patients with a somatoform pain disorder, before, during, and after treatment with amitriptyline with or without flupentixol. 159 84

Mood congruity effects in induced mood states and affective disorders are well established. Recent evidence suggests that a similar process occurs in chronic pain patients, although the extent to which the memory bias is a consequence of the affective or sensory state of the subject in this group is unknown. In this study selective memory for sensory and affective pain-related information was investigated in depressed and non-depressed chronic pain patients and depressed psychiatric patients. A recall test comprising sensory, affective and neutral adjectives matched for frequency was followed by a recognition task, where the words of the recall test were randomized with an equal number of new adjectives matched for word type and frequency. Comparison of the three patient groups with normal controls revealed specific recall biases directly related to pain and depression in both chronic pain groups and the controls. Contrary to expectations, the depressed psychiatric patients failed to show a recall bias for affective adjectives: the possibility of cognitive avoidance as an explanation for this is discussed. Signal detection analysis of the recognition results suggested that selective memory in chronic pain and depression may to some extent be accounted for by differences in 'true memory', the contribution of response bias remaining less clear.
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PMID:Selective memory for sensory and affective information in chronic pain and depression. 160 Apr 10

This is a preliminary investigation into a recently defined urological disorder occurring in a subgroup of women with "urethral syndrome" suggestive of pelvic floor muscular (PFM) dysfunction. Symptoms include straining to void, urgency, frequency, hesitation, incontinence and/or retention, and subpubic pain. Finding neither bladder nor urological abnormalities, urologists may consider these women emotionally unstable without organic cause for their symptoms. However, their distress may be a consequence rather than a cause of their voiding problems. Sixteen female urological patients were matched with 16 asymptomatic controls to investigate PFM functioning, psychological status, and symptomatology. Results showed heterogeneity of symptomatology and little elevation of depression or anxiety when comparing patients with controls. Hypotheses of muscular abnormality were confirmed. Patients evidence poor control over testing and relaxing PFM, elevations of PFM activity under various conditions, and chronic pain as a prominent symptom. Treatment approaches specifically designed to address PFM dysfunction are discussed.
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PMID:A psychophysiological evaluation of female urethral syndrome: evidence for a muscular abnormality. 162 41

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is widely accepted as a treatment for severe depression, but is seldom used in the treatment of chronic pain even though chronic pain and depression frequently occur together. This study presents a case in which ECT relieved both severe depression and chronic pain. It seems that the recognition of depressive disorders merits more attention and that ECT as a treatment for chronic pain in patients with severe depression should be taken into consideration in cases in which other treatments have failed.
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PMID:Chronic facial pain together with severe depression is responsive to electroconvulsive therapy. A case report. 163 4

The aim of the regional administration of opioids is to provide an efficient and prolonged analgesia. Then, opiates can be useful for postoperative analgesia and for the treatment of chronic pain of malignant origin. Analgesia is correlated with several adverse effects of which the most frequent are nausea and itching and the most severe is respiratory depression. Beside the adverse effects, other properties of opiates could be responsible of favourable effects which can be taken in advantage in specific indications. In the postoperative period, epidurally administered opioid can attenuate the neuroendocrine and metabolic responses to surgery and pain. This effect is responsible of a reduction of the resistance to insulin and of a better nutritional balance, especially after major abdominal surgical procedures. Opioids also act by a reduction of the motor functions of the bowel, which perhaps could reduce the incidence of anastomotic breakdowns. Finally, other effects have been reported, as anecdotes, such as the treatment of spasm after bilateral replantation of the ureters, neurologic bladder dysfunctions and enuresis. Spinal administration of opioids has also been used as a treatment of premature ejaculation.
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PMID:[Non-analgesic effects of opioids]. 167 72

Sharp pain is conducted rapidly by myelinated delta A fibers and diffused pain slowly by nonmyelinated C fibers to pseudobipolar neurons in the posterior ganglion and from there to neurons located in the posterolateral horn of the spinal cord. From here on nociferous impulses are transmitted by excitatory peptides (e.g. substance P) or amino acids (e.g. glutamate, aspartate) through interconnecting neurons of the pain pathways, primarily on the contralateral side, to the brain stem and from there to the sensory cortex, where they are appreciated and acted upon. There are specific inhibitory receptors located on axon terminals, near to the release sites of the excitatory amino acids and peptides. Stimulation of these receptors by their appropriate ligands such as endogenous (e.g. enkephalis, endorphins) or exogenous opioids, clonidine, serotonin, somatostatin inhibits the release of excitatory neurotransmitters and relieves pain. There are at least 3 different opioid receptors, called mu-, kappa- and delta-receptors in the spinal cord. These can be differentiated from one another by their specific affinity toward different endogenous or exogenous opioids and the pure narcotic antagonist, naloxone. It appears that the nociferous impulses transmitted by parallel pathways equipped with different inhibitory receptors have to be integrated to produce pain sensation and partial inhibition of transmission in different pathways or complete inhibition in one of the pathways may relieve pain. In recent years the concept of "selective spinal analgesia" has been applied clinically for the relief of postoperative, obstetrical and chronic pain. At first it was expected that the intrathecal or peridural administration of morphine will produce analgesia without the side effects of systemically administered morphine. It soon became evident, however, that intrathecally and peridurally administered morphine after several hours of delay reaches the fourth ventricle and by stimulating mu-receptors may cause respiratory depression and other undesired effects (e.g. nausea, vomiting, pruritus). Several different approaches are being investigated for the production of selective spinal analgesia without side effects. They include: a. the use of more lipophilic, long-lasting opioids (e.g. lofentanil) which would be almost completely absorbed by the spinal cord and therefore would not reach the medullary centers; b. the development of opioids with specific affinity to kappa- and for delta- and little or no affinity to mu-receptors, primarily responsible for side effects; and c. combining lower doses of opioid agonists with alpha 2-adrenergic agonists (e.g. clonidine) or with somatostatin. It is conceivable that in the not-too-distant future, it will be possible to achieve through these measures, selective spinal analgesia without side effects.
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PMID:Pain control with intrathecally and peridurally administered opioids and other drugs. 168 73

Inadequately treated acute and chronic pain remains a major cause of suffering, in spite of enormous advances in pharmacology and technology. Opioids provide a powerful, versatile, widely available means of managing this pain, but their use is too often restrained by ignorance and mistaken fears of addiction. The management of postoperative pain (perhaps the most common form of acute pain) is traditionally attempted with fixed dosages of analgesics by relatively unpredictable routes (e.g. oral, rectal and intramuscular). Intravenous opioid infusions (an improvement) risk respiratory depression and require close monitoring and titration. Patient-controlled analgesia (PCA), by contrast, permits the most efficacious medication (pure opioid agonist) by the optimal route (intravenous) under direct control of the patient, and provides high levels of satisfaction and safety. Ideally, any opioid use should be integrated with a wide spectrum of other analgesic modalities in an anaesthesiology-based 'acute pain service'. The use of opioids for chronic pain of nonmalignant origin remains controversial. There is a perceived conflict between patients' interests and those of society. However, problems (such as tolerance, physical dependence, addiction and chronic toxicity), anticipated from experience with animal experiments and pain-free abusers, seldom cause difficulties when opioids are used appropriately to treat pain (so-called 'dual pharmacology'). With sensible guidelines, and in the context of a multidisciplinary pain clinic, opioids may provide the only hope of relief to many sufferers of chronic pain.
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PMID:Treatment principles for the use of opioids in pain of nonmalignant origin. 171 22

Epileptiform discharge was recorded from neurons in the thalamic nuclei of chronic pain patients during stereotactic surgery. Hyperactive neurons showed regular firing of 3-5 trains of epileptic-like group discharges with a frequency of 4 to 5 Hz. As described by Lombard et al. (1979), we operated on the dorsal root unilaterally, sectioning C5 to Thl in male Wistar rats. One to three months after the operation, hyperactive neurons were examined in the contra-lateral thalamic nuclei (VP, zona incerta), and lemniscus medialis. The firing patterns and distribution of hyperactive neurons in these animals was very similar to those of humans. The hyperactive neuron was unaffected by electrical stimulation of the nucleus raphe dorsalis (NRD) and locus ceruleus (LC). Administration of phenytoin and diazepam reduced the firing. However, no effect was seen with valproic acid. During spreading depression of the sensorimotor cortex, a remarkable reduction was seen on the firing of thalamic hyperactive neurons. This suggested that hyperactive neurons of the thalamic nuclei received facilitory effects from the sensorimotor cortex with little influence from adrenergic or serotoenergic systems.
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PMID:Neurones with epileptiform discharge in the central nervous system and chronic pain. Experimental and clinical investigations. 172 43


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