PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

New tool aims to improve measurement of primary care depression outcomes

Positive measures can aid physicians in evaluating treatment success, U-M study says

2011-05-26
(Press-News.org) ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Primary care doctors have long been on the front lines of depression treatment. Depression is listed as a diagnosis for 1 in 10 office visits and primary care doctors prescribe more than half of all antidepressants.

Now doctors at the University of Michigan Health System have developed a new tool that may help family physicians better evaluate the extent to which a patient's depression has improved.

The issue, the researchers explain, is that the official definition of when a patient's symptoms are in remission doesn't always match up with what doctors see in a real-world practice, especially for patients with mild to moderate symptoms. The study will be published in the upcoming issue of General Hospital Psychiatry.

"Rather than simply going down a list and checking off a patient's lack of individual symptoms, we believe there are also positive signs that are important – a patient's feeling that they are returning to 'normal,' their sense of well-being, their satisfaction with life and their ability to cope with life's ups and downs," says lead author Donald E. Nease Jr., M.D., who was an associate professor of family medicine at the U-M Medical School and member of the U-M Depression Center at the time of the research.

Nease and his colleagues developed a series of five questions – such as, "Over the last two weeks, did you feel in control of your emotions?" – that they hope will help doctors better understand a patient's inner landscape.

The remission criteria spelled out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) doesn't necessarily correspond to a patient's own sense of recovery, Nease explains.

For example, a patient could meet all the criteria for full remission, but still not feel that he had recovered. The U-M questionnaire, which is called Remission Evaluation and Mood Inventory Tool, or REMIT, is intended to add the patient's subjective sense of recovery into the equation.

Rather than a replacement for current tools and measurements, REMIT is intended to compliment them, say Nease, who is currently an adjunct professor at U-M.

The researchers used the REMIT tool alongside the current "gold standard" for monitoring people with depression, the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ), Nease explains.

The data showed that by adding in the REMIT questions, about one-third of patients with mild depression were not in remission, as their PHQ score would indicate. Additionally, about one-third of moderately depressed patients were doing better than their PHQ scores alone would denote.

"Using just the PHQ score across our study population, we saw about 60 percent accuracy in reflecting a patient's remission compared to the patient's sense of his or her own recovery," Nease says. "If you add in the REMIT questions, we get above 70 percent. This can give doctors new insights when making treatment choices, such as changing a patient's medication or dosage."

The current research looked at a single snapshot in time for nearly 1,000 patients. The next step will be to track patients' scores over time.

Unlike other tools that require a company's permission to use, the REMIT tool is available to any doctor who wants to use it, Nease says.

INFORMATION:

Additional Authors: James E. Aikens, Ph.D., Michael S. Klinkman, M.S., M.D., Ananda Sen, Ph.D., all of U-M. And Kurt Kroenke, M.D., of Roudebush VA Medical Center and Indiana University.

Funding: The research was partially supported by a grant from Eli Lilly & Co., which did not have editorial control over the content of the article. The Regents of the University of Michigan placed the tool into the public domain.

Disclosures: None.

Citation: "Toward a more comprehensive assessment of depression remission: the Remission Evaluation and Mood Inventory Tool (REMIT)," General Hospital Psychiatry, DOI: 10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2011.03.002.

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

International trial finds polypill halves predicted heart disease and stroke risk

2011-05-26
The world's first international polypill trial has shown that a four-in-one combination pill can halve the predicted risk of heart disease and stroke. The results are published online today in the open access journal PLoS One [1]. The once-a-day polypill contains aspirin and agents to lower blood pressure and cholesterol. These drugs are currently prescribed separately to millions of patients and are known individually to cut the risk of disease, but many experts believe that combining them into a single pill will encourage people to take the medications more reliably. The ...

Targeted adalimumab treatment can optimize long-term outcomes for patients with early RA

2011-05-26
Results of a study of 1032 patients with early (less than one year), active RA initially assessed response to treatment after 26 weeks with ADA 40mg every other week + MTX versus MTX alone. Results show that 44% of patients treated with the combination therapy achieved the target of sustained low disease activity at week 26, versus 24% of those treated with MTX alone. Patients reaching the target on ADA+MTX were considered responders and then further randomised to continue or withdraw from treatment with ADA 40mg every other week. Patients who continued treatment maintained ...

Children experience wrist and finger pain when using gaming devices and mobile phones over time

2011-05-26
The study, involving 257 students, highlights that a higher degree of pain was experienced with the use of gaming devices compared to mobile phones. Pain reported by children using Xbox and Gameboy was statistically higher than pain reported for the iPhone (p=0.036 and p=0.042 respectively). Importantly, the length of time spent on the devices heightened the pain suffered, as the data demonstrated that length of time was independently associated with the pain reported, with the odds of reporting pain increasing by two (95* CI [1.50, 2.89, p END ...

US study shows that tofacitinib is an efficacious treatment for active RA

2011-05-26
Most adverse events were mild and no new safety signals were reported, according to study authors. Results of the 12 month multinational study, conducted with 792 patients also show that 36.6% and 16.2% of patients achieved ACR50 and ACR70 responses respectively in the 10mg BID group, a significant improvement in symptoms compared to placebo, where 31.2%, 12.7% and 3.2% of patients achieved ACR 20, 50 and 70 respectively. Significant improvements in the Disease Activity Score physician index (DAS28***) were also observed in the treatment groups compared to placebo, along ...

Massive explosion helps Warwick researcher spot universe's most distant object

Massive explosion helps Warwick researcher spot universes most distant object
2011-05-26
An international team of UK and US astronomers have spotted the most distant explosion, and possibly the most distant object, ever seen in the Universe. University of Warwick astronomer Dr Andrew Levan was one of the first members of that team to spot the exploding star, known as a Gamma-ray Burst (GRB), which was briefly as bright as several thousand galaxies (more than a million million times the brightness of the sun). This very bright explosion allowed it to be detected at an extreme estimated distance of 13.14 billion light years - putting it 96% of the way to ...

Northridge Dentists, Dr. Ariz and Dr. Arami, Are Now Using New Technologies to Provide Safer and More Comfortable Treatments for Their Patients

Northridge Dentists, Dr. Ariz and Dr. Arami, Are Now Using New Technologies to Provide Safer and More Comfortable Treatments for Their Patients
2011-05-26
Northridge dentist, Dr. Farshid Ariz, DMD, and Dr. Shahdad Arami, DDS, are popular with local residents for many reasons. The technologies that are provided to diagnose and treat dental problems constantly evolve, but these dentists make new investments in technology and stay current with the required education to provide safe and precision dental care. The i-CAT and E4D technologies are now used at Northridge Dental Group to provide patients with safer and more comfortable treatments. Early detection is a key component in diagnosing severe gum diseases like periodontal ...

Dangerous side effect of common drug combination discovered by Stanford data mining

2011-05-26
STANFORD, Calif. — A widely used combination of two common medications may cause unexpected increases in blood glucose levels, according to a study conducted at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University and Harvard Medical School. Researchers were surprised at the finding because neither of the two drugs — one, an antidepressant marketed as Paxil, and the other, a cholesterol-lowering medication called Pravachol — has a similar effect alone. The increase is more pronounced in people who are diabetic, and in whom the control of blood sugar levels ...

Japan disaster's impact reaches far beyond slow-down in auto exports

2011-05-26
Japan's earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant damage have done more than reduce shipments of popular automobiles and car parts to the United States. Damage from the March disaster at Japanese chemical plants that produce raw materials for the electronics components, although modest in itself, has had some of the most severe impacts in history on the global electronics industry. That's the message from one story in a package of status reports on the disaster in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine. In the articles, C&EN ...

'Sweet wheat' for tastier and more healthful baking

2011-05-26
"Sweet wheat" has the potential for joining that summertime delight among vegetables — sweet corn — as a tasty and healthful part of the diet, the scientific team that developed this mutant form of wheat concludes in a new study. The report appears in the ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Just as sweet corn arose as a mutation in field corn — being discovered and grown by Native American tribes with the Iroquois introducing European settlers to it in 1779 — sweet wheat (SW) originated from mutations in field wheat. Toshiki Nakamura, Tomoya Shimbata and ...

Recycling of Alzheimer's proteins could be key to new treatments

2011-05-26
The formation of abnormal strands of protein called amyloid fibrils — associated with two dozen diseases ranging from Alzheimer's to type-2 diabetes — may not be permanent and irreversible as previously thought, scientists are reporting in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Rather, protein molecules are constantly attaching and detaching from the fibrils, in a recycling process that could be manipulated to yield new treatments for Alzheimer's and other diseases. In a study that focused on the fibrils associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD), Natàlia Carulla ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Underserved youth less likely to visit emergency department for concussion in Ontario, study finds

‘Molecular shield’ placed in the nose may soon treat common hay fever trigger

Beetles under climate stress lay larger male eggs: Wolbachia infection drives adaptive reproduction strategy in response to rising temperature and CO₂

Groundbreaking quantum study puts wave-particle duality to work

Weekly injection could be life changing for Parkinson’s patients

Toxic metals linked to impaired growth in infants in Guatemala

Being consistently physically active in adulthood linked to 30–40% lower risk of death

Nerve pain drug gabapentin linked to increased dementia, cognitive impairment risks

Children’s social care involvement common to nearly third of UK mums who died during perinatal period

‘Support, not judgement’: Study explores links between children’s social care involvement and maternal deaths

Ethnic minority and poorer children more likely to die in intensive care

Major progress in fertility preservation after treatment for cancer of the lymphatic system

Fewer complications after additional ultrasound in pregnant women who feel less fetal movement

Environmental impact of common pesticides seriously underestimated

The Milky Way could be teeming with more satellite galaxies than previously thought

New study reveals surprising reproductive secrets of a cricket-hunting parasitoid fly

Media Tip Sheet: Symposia at ESA2025

NSF CAREER Award will power UVA engineer’s research to improve drug purification

Tiny parasitoid flies show how early-life competition shapes adult success

New coating for glass promises energy-saving windows

Green spaces boost children’s cognitive skills and strengthen family well-being

Ancient trees dying faster than expected in Eastern Oregon

Study findings help hone precision of proven CVD risk tool

Most patients with advanced melanoma who received pre-surgical immunotherapy remain alive and disease free four years later

Introducing BioEmu: A generative AI Model that enables high-speed and accurate prediction of protein structural ensembles

Replacing mutated microglia with healthy microglia halts progression of genetic neurological disease in mice and humans

New research shows how tropical plants manage rival insect tenants by giving them separate ‘flats’

Condo-style living helps keep the peace inside these ant plants

Climate change action could dramatically limit rising UK heatwave deaths

Annual heat-related deaths projected to increase significantly due to climate and population change

[Press-News.org] New tool aims to improve measurement of primary care depression outcomes
Positive measures can aid physicians in evaluating treatment success, U-M study says