Conditions: Depression Anxiety
Keywords: Cardiovascular Biomarkers Depression Quetiapine
Allocation: NON_RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 91
Healthy volunteers: yes

Brief summary:
No suitable treatment has been identified to reverse and ideally prevent, the cardiovascular disease risk associated with depression and anxiety. The purpose of this study is to determine if quetiapine treatment of depression can reverse the signs of arterial stiffening that often occurs in depression and anxiety, and which are believed to be risk factors for future heart disease.

Detailed description:
The evidence that depressive and anxiety disorders confer a high relative risk (RR) for cardiovascular disease (CVD) development is clear and compelling. A cadre of inflammation, platelet activation and other biomarkers of endothelial dysfunction strongly suggest multiple and possibly interrelated mechanisms underlying this co-morbidity. Early detection of the vulnerability to develop CVD has become an urgent health issue. However, detection alone of vulnerability without proper therapeutic intervention aimed at reversing it, is merely of scientific interest. The evidence to date that antidepressant drugs, while highly efficacious in restoring euthymia, may not normalize the biomarkers of CVD vulnerability. Hence, there is a need to identify other pharmacologic interventions for depression. Quetiapine, due to its unique molecular structure and unique pharmacological profile, belongs to none of the known classes of antidepressants. However, quetiapine clearly has antidepressant and anti-anxiety efficacies. Now, we propose to explore whether quetiapine can reverse those pathophysiological changes occurring in mixed depression/anxiety that have been linked causally to the development of CVD. Accordingly, the primary purpose of this study is to compare C-Reactive Protein between the treatment and healthy control groups at 12 weeks post treatment.

Arms:
arm 1: Patients will undergo baseline psychological and laboratory tests then receive Quetiapine-XR(Seroquel-XR) with flexible dosing at the discretion of the treating physician based on clinical response and tolerability. The dose range will be from 50-300mg. The total duration of the treatment will be 12 weeks. arm 2: Participants without major depressive disorder or anxiety are enrolled as a comparison group without intervention.

Interventions: intervention 1: Quetiapine-XR
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Quetiapine-XR (Seroquel-XR) 50-300mg daily for 12 weeks.

Protocol document: