Page 18 - CIBERSAM2016-ENG

Depression
Coordinator: Víctor Pérez Sola (Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau)
The CIBERSAM depression programme aims to carry out collaborative projects with basic and clinical researchers: from the animal model to the patient, from genetics to clinical practice, including neurochemistry and molecular biology. To this end it has integrated clinical and basic groups with extensive experience in translational research. In 2016 the different groups in the programme cooperated in publications culminating different intra and extramural projects focussing on basic research, new therapeutic targets and gene-environment interaction, neuroimaging studies and clinical assays which have enabled evaluating pharmacological and physical therapies in refractory depression. A line of research has been consolidated focussing on suicide-risk factors and on the consolidation-evaluation of specific programmes for prevention of suicidal conduct.
The research programmes are structured around three main thematic lines: epidemiology and prevention of depressive illness and suicide; neurobiological bases of mood disorders; efficacy, resistance and new therapeutic targets in depression.
The specific achievements of the programme are as follows:
Depression is one of the illnesses most connected with suicide, currently one of the main causes of death among young people. CIBERSAM researchers have published a systematic review on the effectiveness of suicide prevention strategies. The reference scale in the evaluation of suicidal conduct has been validated into Spanish as well as other evaluation instruments, including scales for evaluation of depressive and cognitive symptomatology.
On the epidemiological level, several pieces of international collaboration work were published over 2016, focussing on evaluation and risks of not performing a proper treatment in depressive patients and on
the possible consequences of the economic crisis in the prevalence of depression. Different groups in the programme form part of international consortiums which this year published some important findings stemming from GWAS in patients with major depressive disorder, recurrent depression and obesity.
One of the most active lines in the programme is the one studying the relationship between inflammatory processes and depressive symptomatology, as well as its relationship with different drugs inducing depressive symptomatology such as interferon and the use of anti-inflammatory drugs as possible therapeutic targets in the treatment of this illness. The CIBERSAM groups investigating the neuroanatomical and functional basis of mental illness by means of neuroanatomical and/or neuroimaging methods have published relevant findings as studies relating structural and functional neuroimaging with vulnerability/ resilience, cognition or evolution of medium-long-term depressive illness and a review which will become a benchmark in the area on the cerebral circuits implicated in mental illness.
If any of the different lines of research of the programme constitute its core this is doubtlessly the one studying new therapeutic targets and the evaluation of efficacy and safety of treatments. In 2016 different groups published results of several international clinical trials and studies focussing on the neurobiological bases of treatment such as deep brain stimulation or ECT, and put into practice therapeutic proposals such as the use of ayahuasca, cannabidiol or low-intensity psychotherapies. In 2016, the analysis of the DEPRES study was also completed - one of the most ambitious intramural projects of the CIBERSAM - in which
a controlled Clinical Trial was used to find out which is the best therapeutic option in a sample of 250 patients resistant to anti-depressive treatment. As regards functionality and quality of life, we went on with the line of research centring on interventions to improve psychosocial difficulties in depression.
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