Another promising open study of minocycline in bipolar depression
Joanna Soczynska in Roger McIntyre’s lab at the University of Toronto presented a poster at the 2014 meeting of the International College of Neuropsychopharmacology (CINP) on the anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective antibiotic minocycline.
Twenty-seven patients with a major depression received minocycline in addition to the medications they were already being prescribed. Dosage was 100mg twice a day. Treatment with adjunctive minocycline was associated with significant improvement on several scales that measure depression severity.
Editor’s Note: What was particularly interesting was that a subset of patients achieved complete remission, raising the question whether these patients might have markers of inflammation that would predict this excellent response. The authors concluded that the “results provide a rationale for testing minocycline’s efficacy in a larger randomized, placebo-controlled trial.”
Exactly this type of study was proposed a year ago by researcher Andy Nierenberg and given the best marks by a National Institute of Mental Health review committee but was turned down for funding because the National Institute of Mental Health has implemented a new initiative, Research Domain Criteria (RDoC), that lays out new criteria for research, limiting funding to those studies that focus on a molecular target that spans several diagnoses.)
