TO COMPARE EFFICACY OF PROBIOTIC NUTRACEUTICALS AND PROBIOTIC FOOD (CURD) ALONG WITH ANTIDEPRESSANT IN SUBJECTS SUFFERING FROM DEPRESSION

Field: Medicine (Health Sciences)

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