This is interesting and has potential relevance to mood changes in the prodromal phase of PD as well... the may be gender-specific features to depression and this may mean we need to reconsider how we measure depression in cohorts like PREDICT-PD...
Parkinsonism Relat Disord. 2016 Dec 29. pii: S1353-8020(16)30519-3. doi: 10.1016/j.parkreldis.2016.12.026. [Epub ahead of print]
Perrin AJ, Nosova E, Co K, Book A, Iu O, Silva V, Thompson C, McKeown MJ, Stoessl AJ, Farrer MJ, Appel-Cresswell S.
http://www.prd-journal.com/article/S1353-8020(16)30519-3/abstract
INTRODUCTION:
30-40% of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) experience depression during their illness; identifying subtypes of depression and groups at risk remains a challenge in routine clinical care. One avenue that remains underexplored is the gender-specific profiles manifested in PD depression. We sought to explore this in a large sample of clinical PD patients.
METHODS:
307 patient records at a tertiary referral centre were reviewed for clinical and demographic factors. We used recursive partitioning to determine which items on the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were most useful in differentiating patients who scored in the depressed range (≥14) from those who scored in the non-depressed range (≤13). We also used recursive partitioning to identify those BDI items that were most effective in differentiating depressed from non-depressed patients in both genders.
RESULTS:
We were able to identify a subset of items on the BDI that were most useful in partitioning depressed from non-depressed in the entire cohort. Partitioning of men and women with PD depression relied on different key BDI items, melancholy featuring prominently in women, while the more classical factors associated with depression in PD (apathy and loss of libido) featured more prominently in men.
CONCLUSION:
Unique factors not previously identified as core features of depression in PD were found most useful in partitioning depressed women from non-depressed women. This raises the possibility that a female-specific depressive profile has been under-appreciated in past work. Additional studies are required to discern how this may impact future research, diagnosis and treatment.
As always I love to follow your site. I wanted to make you aware of this, to be, mind blowing study linking low estrogen to dopamine producing cell death. This has so much potential and explains a lot as well.
ReplyDelete"Without estrogen, more than 30 percent of all the dopamine neurons disappeared in a major area of the brain that produces the neurotransmitter, dopamine, " Redmond said. "This finding is consistent with a lot of observations for which there has been, until now, no explanation. The results of the study shed light on why men, who have less estrogen in their bodies and more androgen to antagonize it, are more likely to develop Parkinson's Disease than pre-menopausal women, and why post menopausal women are more likely then to develop the disease."
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/12/001204072446.htm
BTW, women undergoing depression with PD would have to have a very hard time of it, given that not only are they low on dopamine but also very low on estrogen as well. Estrogen replacement studies on AD show Estradiol to be effective provided there is not a period of nop replacement, very similar to this study. Wow!
ReplyDeleteI have doing a lot of study on inflammation in the brain being tied to a wide variety of neuro illnesses like bipolar, depression, Alzheimer's, etc. There is a lot of linking between chronic inflammation and these disease states. For instance one study showed that APOE4 alone forces the extended and high release of IL-6. I think there's a lot to chase down with that especially when depression gets deep enough for suicidal actions. A possible remedy is EGCG found in green tea extract. Other flavinols such as apigenin look to be even more promising. It is not hard on the liver like EGCG is.
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ReplyDeleteI am glad that worked for you .. very glad. However rather than pushing some specific supplement I would vastly prefer that you post what it contains. This is really not a place to pitch.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck to you.
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