Five biotypes of depression

[nancylebov]

A new study finds some evidence that there are (at least) five types of depression

Undermethylated Depression
This type of depression was found in 38 percent of patients in the study. The problem in these cases is low activity at serotonin receptors, apparently due to rapid reabsorbtion after serotonin is released into a synapse.

“It’s not serotonin deficiency, but an inability to keep serotonin in the synapse long enough. Most of these patients report excellent response to SSRI antidepressants, although they may experience nasty side effects,” Walsh said.

Pyrrole Depression
This type was found in 17 percent of the patients studied, and most of these patients also said that SSRI antidepressants helped them. These patients exhibited a combination of impaired serotonin production and extreme oxidative stress.

Copper Overload
Accounting for 15 percent of cases in the study, these patients cannot properly metabolize metals. Most of these people say that SSRIs do not have much of an effect—positive or negative—on them, but they report benefits from normalizing their copper levels through nutrient therapy. Most of these patients are women who are also estrogen intolerant.

“For them, it’s not a serotonin issue, but extreme blood and brain levels of copper that result in dopamine deficiency and norepinephrine overload,” Walsh explained. “This may be the primary cause of postpartum depression.”

Low-Folate Depression
These patients account for 20 percent of the cases studied, and many of them say that SSRIs worsened their symptoms, while folic acid and vitamin B12 supplements helped. Benzodiazepine medications may also help people with low-folate depression.

Walsh said that a study of 50 school shootings over the past five decades showed that most shooters probably had this type of depression, as SSRIs can cause suicidal or homicidal ideation in these patients.

Toxic Depression
This type of depression is caused by toxic-metal overload—usually lead poisoning. Over the years, this type accounted for 5 percent of depressed patients, but removing lead from gasoline and paint has lowered the frequency of these cases.

I really hope this pans out-- finding the right anti-depressant can be a miserable process.

I'll also note that the people ranting about school shootings and anti-depressants may well have been partly right.

I had no idea there might be a connection between copper and depression, though it's not totally news-- this discussion talks about a copper/zinc imbalance.

Comments

[siderea]

Huh!

[redbird]

I'm skeptical here, partly because they assert "a study" but don't actually link to it. (This sort of press release normally has a link to at least an abstract, and usually the article, perhaps behind a paywall.) So, they assert "we have a study of n thousand people," but all they've published so far is this press release and pretty graph.

Since they haven't included all causes of depression in their graph—at minimum, they're omitting traumatic brain injury, PTSD, multiple sclerosis and and other diseases which can have depression as a symptom, and depression as an drug side effect—I really would want to see the paper. How did they screen their subjects? (Eliminating people with a known non-biochemical issue would be reasonable, but should be stated, if only because someone could have one of the chemical problems they're looking at and be on interferons or have a history of trauma.)

Also, poking around a little, "pyrrole disease" seems to be a discarded hypothesis, something that made sense fifty years ago but turned out not to be replicable. If so, what they're left with is "and 17% of patients had depression not from one of these other causes, and SSRIs helped them," which among other things could mean two or more different things that SSRIs helped.

They may be onto something useful here, but I'd want to see quite a bit more data, ideally both the details of this study and follow-up from other people.

[siderea]

Yeah, I'm afraid that this Walsh guy looks like a bit of a crank. I tried to track down the article. It was presented at the APA mtg last weekend, so presumably it will be published in their proceedings, but I wasn't able to find it on the net. So I decided to look into WJ Walsh, PhD. He has his own personal research institute/clinic, which is a little odd what with him being a researcher and not a medical professional. He doesn't have a proper CV posted, and, indeed, his website overall exclusively addresses an audience presumed to be patients looking for treatment, and not fellow professionals. One would expect a researcher to have a brag sheet of research to establish his bona fides in the eyes of fellow professionals (that is typical among PhDs), and what he has instead is this which is... not that. He doesn't have much of any footprint on scholar.google.com. Poking about the internet, his institutional affiliations seem to go in a tight little circle.

He may be on to something, but he's not within the mainstream of research -- or of clinical practice. He's at the very least something of a maverick, off doing his own thing. And the ambiguity of roles -- he identifies as a "researcher" (the right term would be "scientist" if he were one, since he claims to have a PhD) and does not have a medical degree, but he's flogging a self-help treatment book, and his affiliations are with organizations which present as treatment organizations for patients -- something smells off to me.

It feels to me that he's working hard to misrepresent himself to laypeople as more [1] and other [2] than he is: 1) the Walsh Research Institute seems to consist of exactly him and no other researchers 2) He seems to be trading on most people's lack of awareness of the difference between a PhD-type "doctor" and a medical doctor.

When someone works that hard to deceive, I don't much trust their research.

(And on the flip side, I know a case of this sort of thing locally, where, actually, it's apparently a quite excellent treater, who puffs themselves up as an academic expert and calls their thing an "Institute" to attract business. So *shrug*.)

[pseudomonas]

Yeah, that's not exactly a very impressive publication record! And the things marked "Scientific Journal" rather than a proper citation? Where half of them are conference proceedings?