Industry withdrawal from psychiatric medication development

Between 1950 and 1969, on a serendipitous basis, psychiatric drug development flourished. However, there has been a steep decline in the development of new medication classes. Instead of new molecular entities, slight molecular modifications producing “me-too” drugs attempted to garner market share. With failing profitability, industry is now withdrawing from psychiatric medication development. Managed care drastically shortened contact between patients and clinicians, so the possible observation of unexpected benefits has been nullified. The randomized, parallel-groups design met FDA requirements for specific pharmacological efficacy. However, it does not determine whether a patient who improved while drug-treated required the drug or would have gotten better on his own. Further, pathophysiology benefit remains obscure. The major psychotropic drugs have no benefits for normal subjects. Their remarkable benefits must stem from a necessary interaction with a pathophysiological state. Therefore, understanding therapeutic benefit by treating normal subjects becomes unlikely. The claim that therapeutic knowledge in psychiatry proceeds from bench to bedside has proven vacuous, primarily because of our limited understanding of brain pathophysiology. The utility of the alternative intensive design for understanding diagnosis, therapeutic benefit, and pathophysiology is emphasized.

Industry withdrawal from psychiatric medication development.

Between 1950 and 1969, on a serendipitous basis, psychiatric drug development flourished. However, there has been a steep decline in the development of new medication classes. Instead of new molecular entities, slight molecular modifications producing "me-too" drugs attempted to garner market share. With failing profitability, industry is now withdrawing from psychiatric medication development. Managed care drastically shortened contact between patients and clinicians, so the possible observation of unexpected benefits has been nullified. The randomized, parallel-groups design met FDA requirements for specific pharmacological efficacy. However, it does not determine whether a patient who improved while drug-treated required the drug or would have gotten better on his own. Further, pathophysiology benefit remains obscure. The major psychotropic drugs have no benefits for normal subjects. Their remarkable benefits must stem from a necessary interaction with a pathophysiological state. Therefore, understanding therapeutic benefit by treating normal subjects becomes unlikely. The claim that therapeutic knowledge in psychiatry proceeds from bench to bedside has proven vacuous, primarily because of our limited understanding of brain pathophysiology. The utility of the alternative intensive design for understanding diagnosis, therapeutic benefit, and pathophysiology is emphasized.

Lifelong opioidergic vulnerability through early life separation: a recent extension of the false suffocation alarm theory of panic disorder.

The present paper is the edited version of our presentations at the "First World Symposium On Translational Models Of Panic Disorder", in Vitoria, E.S., Brazil, on November 16-18, 2012. We also review relevant work that appeared after the conference. Suffocation-False Alarm Theory (Klein, 1993) postulates the existence of an evolved physiologic suffocation alarm system that monitors information about potential suffocation. Panic attacks maladaptively occur when the alarm is erroneously triggered. The expanded Suffocation-False Alarm Theory (Preter and Klein, 2008) hypothesizes that endogenous opioidergic dysregulation may underlie the respiratory pathophysiology and suffocation sensitivity in panic disorder. Opioidergic dysregulation increases sensitivity to CO2, separation distress and panic attacks. That sudden loss, bereavement and childhood separation anxiety are also antecedents of "spontaneous" panic requires an integrative explanation. Our work unveiling the lifelong endogenous opioid system impairing effects of childhood parental loss (CPL) and parental separation in non-ill, normal adults opens a new experimental, investigatory area.

Baseline matters: the importance of covariation for baseline severity in the analysis of clinical trials.

BACKGROUND: Clinical trials testing the effectiveness of interventions for addictions, HIV transmission risk, and other behavioral health problems are important to advancing evidence-based treatment. Such trials are expensive and time-consuming to conduct, but the underlying effect sizes tend to be modest, and often findings are disappointing, failing to show evidence of treatment effects. OBJECTIVES: To demonstrate how appropriate covariation for baseline severity can enhance detection of treatment effects. METHODS: Explication and case example. RESULTS: Baseline severity (the score of the outcome measure at baseline, prior to randomization) is often strongly associated with outcome in such studies. Covariation for baseline score may enhance detection of treatment effects, because the variance explained by the baseline score is removed from the error variance in the estimate of the difference in outcome between treatments. Alternatively, the effect of treatment may manifest in the form of a baseline-by-treatment interaction. Common interaction patterns include that treatment may be more effective among patients with higher levels of baseline severity, or treatment may be more effective among patients with low severity at baseline ('relapse prevention' effect). Such effects may be important to developing treatment guidelines and offer clues toward understanding the mechanisms of action of treatments and of the disorders. CONCLUSIONS AND SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE: This article illustrates principles of covariation for baseline and the baseline-by-treatment interaction in nontechnical graphical terms, and discusses examples from clinical trials. Implications for the design and analysis of clinical trials are discussed, and it is argued that covariation for baseline severity of the outcome measure and testing of the baseline-by-treatment interaction should be considered for inclusion in the primary outcome analyses of treatment effectiveness trials of substantial size.

Interaction between δ opioid receptors and benzodiazepines in CO2-induced respiratory responses in mice.

The false-suffocation hypothesis of panic disorder (Klein, 1993) suggested δ-opioid receptors as a possible source of the respiratory dysfunction manifested in panic attacks occurring in panic disorder (Preter and Klein, 2008). This study sought to determine if a lack of δ-opioid receptors in a mouse model affects respiratory response to elevated CO2, and whether the response is modulated by benzodiazepines, which are widely used to treat panic disorder. In a whole-body plethysmograph, respiratory responses to 5% CO2 were compared between δ-opioid receptor knockout mice and wild-type mice after saline, diazepam (1mg/kg), and alprazolam (0.3mg/kg) injections. The results show that lack of δ-opioid receptors does not affect normal response to elevated CO2, but does prevent benzodiazepines from modulating that response. Thus, in the presence of benzodiazepine agonists, respiratory responses to elevated CO2 were enhanced in δ-opioid receptor knockout mice compared to wild-type mice. This suggests an interplay between benzodiazepine receptors and δ-opioid receptors in regulating the respiratory effects of elevated CO2, which might be related to CO2 induced panic.

Low frequency fluctuations reveal integrated and segregated processing among the cerebral hemispheres.

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has provided a novel approach for examining interhemispheric interaction, demonstrating a high degree of functional connectivity between homotopic regions in opposite hemispheres. However, heterotopic resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) remains relatively uncharacterized. In the present study, we examine non-homotopic regions, characterizing heterotopic RSFC and comparing it to intrahemispheric RSFC, to examine the impact of hemispheric separation on the integration and segregation of processing in the brain. Resting-state fMRI scans were acquired from 59 healthy participants to examine inter-regional correlations in spontaneous low frequency fluctuations in BOLD signal. Using a probabilistic atlas, we correlated probability-weighted time series from 112 regions (56 per hemisphere) distributed throughout the entire cerebrum. We compared RSFC for pairings of non-homologous regions located in different hemispheres (heterotopic connectivity) to RSFC for the same pairings when located within hemisphere (intrahemispheric connectivity). For positive connections, connectivity strength was greater within each hemisphere, consistent with integrated intrahemispheric processing. However, for negative connections, RSFC strength was greater between the hemispheres, consistent with segregated interhemispheric processing. These patterns were particularly notable for connections involving frontal and heteromodal regions. The distribution of positive and negative connectivity was nearly identical within and between the hemispheres, though we demonstrated detailed regional variation in distribution. We discuss implications for leading models of interhemispheric interaction. The future application of our analyses may provide important insight into impaired interhemispheric processing in clinical and aging populations.

Carbon dioxide hypersensitivity in separation-anxious offspring of parents with panic disorder.

BACKGROUND: Similar patterns of vulnerability to carbon dioxide (CO(2)) inhalation have been reported in adults with panic disorder (PD) and children with separation anxiety disorder (SAD), suggesting a link between the adult and child conditions. This study examines the influence of familial risk for PD on CO(2) responses in children with SAD. We hypothesized that offspring with SAD of parents with PD would have distinct CO(2) responses. METHODS: Two hundred twelve 9- to 20-year-old offspring of parents with or without PD were exposed to maintained 5% CO(2) inhalation in the participants' homes. Anxiety symptoms, panic attacks, and respiratory physiology (respiratory frequency and tidal volume) were monitored during baseline and 15-min maintained CO(2) breathing. RESULTS: As hypothesized, significant offspring SAD x parent PD interactions were obtained for anxiety symptoms, respiratory frequency, tidal volume, and a panting index during CO(2) inhalation. Offspring with both SAD and parental PD exhibited more anxiety symptoms at termination of 5% CO(2) breathing than the other offspring groups and had the most extreme values on measures of respiratory physiology. CONCLUSIONS: Youth with both SAD and parental PD have respiratory responses to CO(2) similar to adult PD. They might be a subtype of SAD at particularly high risk for adult PD.

Improved statistical analysis of moclobemide dose effects on panic disorder treatment.

Clinical trials with several measurement occasions are frequently analyzed using only the last available observation as the dependent variable [last observation carried forward (LOCF)]. This ignores intermediate observations. We reanalyze, with complete data methods, a clinical trial previously reported using LOCF, comparing placebo and five dosage levels of moclobemide in the treatment of outpatients with panic disorder to illustrate the superiority of methods using repeated observations. We initially analyzed unprovoked and situational, major and minor attacks as the four dependent variables, by repeated measures maximum likelihood methods. The model included parameters for linear and curvilinear time trends and regression of measures during treatment on baseline measures. Significance tests using this method take into account the structure of the error covariance matrix. This makes the sphericity assumption irrelevant. Missingness is assumed to be unrelated to eventual outcome and the residuals are assumed to have a multivariate normal distribution. No differential treatment effects for limited attacks were found. Since similar results were obtained for both types of major attack, data for the two types of major attack were combined. Overall downward linear and negatively accelerated downward curvilinear time trends were found. There were highly significant treatment differences in the regression slopes of scores during treatment on baseline observations. For major attacks, all treatment groups improved over time. The flatter regression slopes, obtained with higher doses, indicated that higher doses result in uniformly lower attack rates regardless of initial severity. Lower doses do not lower the attack rate of severely ill patients to those achieved in the less severely ill. The clinical implication is that more severe patients require higher doses to attain best benefit. Further, the significance levels obtained by LOCF analyses were only in the 0.05-0.01 range, while significance levels of <0.00001 were obtained by these repeated measures analyses indicating increased power. The greater sensitivity to treatment effect of this complete data method is illustrated. To increase power, it is often recommended to increase sample size. However, this is often impractical since a major proportion of the cost per subject is due to the initial evaluation. Increasing the number of repeated observations increases power economically and also allows detailed longitudinal trajectory analyses.

Is aspirin useful in patients on lithium? A pharmacoepidemiological study related to bipolar disorder.

OBJECTIVES: Administration to rats of mood stabilizers approved for bipolar disorder (BD) downregulates markers of the brain arachidonic acid (AA, 20:4n-6) metabolic cascade, including phospholipase A(2) (PLA(2)) and cyclooxygenase (COX) expression. We hypothesized that other agents that target the brain AA cascade, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and glucocorticoids, also would ameliorate BD symptoms. METHODS: Medication histories on subjects who had been prescribed lithium were collected from the Netherlands PHARMO Record Linkage System. Data were stratified according to drug classes that inhibit PLA(2) and/or COX enzymes, and duration of use. Incidence density (ID) of medication events (dose increase or substance change) was used as a proxy for clinical worsening. ID ratios in patients with the inhibitors plus lithium were compared to ratios in patients using lithium alone. RESULTS: Low-dose acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) significantly reduced the ID ratio of medication events, independent of use duration. The ID ratios of NSAIDs and glucocorticoids did not differ significantly from 1.0 if prescribed for > or =180 or > or =90 days, but exceeded 1.0 with shorter use. Selective COX-2 inhibitors had no significant effect and multiagent administration increased the ID ratio above 1.0. CONCLUSIONS: Low-dose aspirin produced a statistically significant duration-independent reduction in the relative risk of clinical deterioration in subjects on lithium, whereas other NSAIDs and glucocorticoids did not. These tentative findings could be tested on larger databases containing detailed information about diagnosis and disease course, as well as by controlled clinical trials.

The oscillating brain: complex and reliable.

The human brain is a complex dynamic system capable of generating a multitude of oscillatory waves in support of brain function. Using fMRI, we examined the amplitude of spontaneous low-frequency oscillations (LFO) observed in the human resting brain and the test-retest reliability of relevant amplitude measures. We confirmed prior reports that gray matter exhibits higher LFO amplitude than white matter. Within gray matter, the largest amplitudes appeared along mid-brain structures associated with the "default-mode" network. Additionally, we found that high-amplitude LFO activity in specific brain regions was reliable across time. Furthermore, parcellation-based results revealed significant and highly reliable ranking orders of LFO amplitudes among anatomical parcellation units. Detailed examination of individual low frequency bands showed distinct spatial profiles. Intriguingly, LFO amplitudes in the slow-4 (0.027-0.073 Hz) band, as defined by Buzsáki et al., were most robust in the basal ganglia, as has been found in spontaneous electrophysiological recordings in the awake rat. These results suggest that amplitude measures of LFO can contribute to further between-group characterization of existing and future "resting-state" fMRI datasets.

Reliable intrinsic connectivity networks: test-retest evaluation using ICA and dual regression approach.

Functional connectivity analyses of resting-state fMRI data are rapidly emerging as highly efficient and powerful tools for in vivo mapping of functional networks in the brain, referred to as intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs). Despite a burgeoning literature, researchers continue to struggle with the challenge of defining computationally efficient and reliable approaches for identifying and characterizing ICNs. Independent component analysis (ICA) has emerged as a powerful tool for exploring ICNs in both healthy and clinical populations. In particular, temporal concatenation group ICA (TC-GICA) coupled with a back-reconstruction step produces participant-level resting state functional connectivity maps for each group-level component. The present work systematically evaluated the test-retest reliability of TC-GICA derived RSFC measures over the short-term (<45 min) and long-term (5-16 months). Additionally, to investigate the degree to which the components revealed by TC-GICA are detectable via single-session ICA, we investigated the reproducibility of TC-GICA findings. First, we found moderate-to-high short- and long-term test-retest reliability for ICNs derived by combining TC-GICA and dual regression. Exceptions to this finding were limited to physiological- and imaging-related artifacts. Second, our reproducibility analyses revealed notable limitations for template matching procedures to accurately detect TC-GICA based components at the individual scan level. Third, we found that TC-GICA component's reliability and reproducibility ranks are highly consistent. In summary, TC-GICA combined with dual regression is an effective and reliable approach to exploratory analyses of resting state fMRI data.