A new chronobiological approach to discriminate between acute and chronic depression using peripheral temperature, rest-activity, and light exposure parameters

BMC Psychiatry

Research Article

Antoni Diez-Noguera¹  Trinitat Cambras¹  Rosa Levandovski²  Cláudia Ávila Moraes²  Regina Schimitt²  Giovana Dantas²  Maria Paz Hidalgo³ 

[1] Departament de Fisiologia, Facultat de Farmàcia, Universitat de Barcelona, Avinguda de Joan XXIIIs/n, 08028, Barcelona, Spain;Laboratório de Cronobiologia do Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA), da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Ramiro Barcelos, 2350 sala 12107, 90035-003, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil;Laboratório de Cronobiologia do Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA), da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Ramiro Barcelos, 2350 sala 12107, 90035-003, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil;Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências Médicas: Psiquiatria, UFRGS, Porto Alegre, Brazil;Departamento de Psiquiatria e Medicina Legal da Faculdade de Medicina, da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil;

关键词: Depression;    Temperature;    Activity;    Light;    Circadian rhythm;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-244X-13-77

 received in 2012-10-29, accepted in 2013-03-05,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCircadian theories for major depressive disorder have suggested that the rhythm of the circadian pacemaker is misaligned. Stable phase relationships between internal rhythms, such as temperature and rest/activity, and the external day-night cycle, are considered to be crucial for adapting to life in the external environmental. Therefore, the relationship and possible alterations among (i) light exposure, (ii) activity rhythm, and (iii) temperature rhythm could be important factors in clinical depression. This study aimed to investigate the rhythmic alterations in depression and evaluate the ability of chronobiological parameters to discriminate between healthy subjects and depressed patients.MethodsThirty female subjects, including healthy subjects, depressed patients in the first episode, and major recurrent depression patients. Symptoms were assessed using Hamilton Depression Scale, Beck Depression Inventory and Montgomery-Äsberg Scale. Motor activity, temperature, and light values were determined for 7 days by actigraph, and circadian rhythms were calculated.ResultsDepressed groups showed a lower amplitude in the circadian rhythm of activity and light exposure, but a higher amplitude in the rhythm of peripheral temperature. The correlation between temperature and activity values was different in the day and night among the control and depressed groups. For the same level of activity, depressed patients had lowest temperature values during the day. The amplitudes of temperature and activity were the highest discriminant parameters.ConclusionsThese results indicate that the study of rhythms is useful for diagnosis and therapy for depressive mood disorders.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Moraes et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.