TO COMPARE EFFICACY OF PROBIOTIC NUTRACEUTICALS AND PROBIOTIC FOOD (CURD) ALONG WITH ANTIDEPRESSANT IN SUBJECTS SUFFERING FROM DEPRESSION
Authors: Sanmith TD , Paliwal Abhay , bagul Koustubh 
Published: October 2022

INTRODUCTION: Approximately 280 million people are currently living in the world with depression and in India,
approximately around 57 lack people are affected by depression. There are various antidepressants available for major
depressive disorder but there is a need also emerging for novel approaches to treatment for depression that not only reduce the cost of
intervention but also the associated side effects of these antidepressants. Since ancient times there has been an old saying that all diseases start in
the gut. Hence scientists and researchers in this century started working on a special bidirectional pathway called ―the gut-brain axis.
Depression is characterized by a low level of serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline and as with most of these neurohormones, up to 90 percent
of production occurs in the gut by microbiota hence gut-brain axis was found to be a very important link in searching for alternate novel
depression treatments. To compare efcacy of probiotic nutraceuticals and probioti AIM: c food (curd) along with antidepressant in subjects
suffering from depression. This Prospective Observational Study study was conducted a MATERIAL AND METHODS: t the department of
psychiatry, MGMMC Indore India. A purposive sampling technique was used. The study sample consists of 90 subjects with depression in the
age group 18-60. Diagnosis of depression was done as per the ICD-10 and Hamilton depression rating scale. The duration of the study was 4
weeks with two follow-ups on day 14 and day 28. Among subjects with depression thirty subjects were given tablet Escitalopram 10mg, thirty
subjects were given tablet Escitalopram 10 mg and 120 ml curd, and the remaining thirty subjects were given tablet escitalopram 10 mg and
probiotic capsule. Hamilton depression rating scale was applied after each follow-up. Different statistical methods such as comparative analysis
through the Chi-square (χ2) test and Tukey‘s Honest Signicance Difference Test were employed by using the SPSS tool (version 20) with
signicance at 1 % level (P<.01). On analyzing the results it was found that RESULTS: the comparison of mean HDRS on patients between
days of treatment and each treatment type was statistically signicant (P<0.001). It was also observed that between day 0 and day 28 there was a
slightly greater reduction in mean HDRS values by one or two points in the probiotic group from day 0 value of 12.50 ± 0.50a to 5.50 ± 0.84c on
day 28 when compared to a reduction in HDRS values in curd group from day 0 value of 12.43 ± 0.43a to 6.70 ± 0.90c on day 28 and reduction in
HDRS value in escitalopram group from day 0 value of 12.67 ± 0.42a to 7.07 ± 0.94b on day 28. Prese CONCLUSION: nt study provide
valuable evidence of the efcacy of probiotics nutraceuticals and probiotic food (Curd) when used with the anti-depressive drug Escitalopram.
Among other issues such as the potential to produce a visible effect, antidepressant medication is frequently accompanied by intolerable side
effects that cause a signicant proportion of patients to discontinue their medication but the lower dose of the anti-depressive drug when given
with probiotic supplementation and curd and also reduced side effects due to better gut health might be benecial for the depression patients