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Pharmacological interventions in dysthymia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2020

Y Lecrubier*
Affiliation:
Inserm U302, Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, 47 Bd de l'Hôpital, 75651Paris cedex 13, France
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Summary

The results of early therapeutic trials (1960s and 70s) in mild chronic depression (neurotic patients) are difficult to extrapolate to dysthymia. Most studies conducted in the early 1980s showed reference drugs (TCAs and MAOIs) to be poorly effective in chronic mild depression usually defined with RDC. The most recent trials using DSM-III-R criteria for dysthymic recruitment showed TCAs, new MAOIs (RIMA) and SSRI to be effective. AU these compounds have a rather similar pharmacological mechanism of action. It is therefore of both practical and theoretical interest that amisulpride, a benzamide derivative blocking D2 and D3 pre-synaptic receptors, has been found effective in the treatment of dysthymia in different placebo and reference controlled trials. This result is in line with the pharmacological data on animal ‘anhedonic models’.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Elsevier paris 1996

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