Conditions: Major Depressive Disorder Back Pain Aged
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 30
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The following primary hypotheses will be tested:

1. During Step 1: Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) or Chronic Low Back Pain (CLBP) in \< 40% of the initial 60 subjects treated with duloxetine (DUL) + Clinical Management(CM) during the first 8 weeks will respond (response is defined as a Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) score \</=9 and at least a 30% improvement in back pain as measured with the 20-point numeric rating scale.
2. During Step 2: More DUL+Problem Solving Therapy for Depression and Pain (PST-DP) than DUL+CM treated subjects will achieve response during the second 8 weeks, defined as a MADRS score \</=9 and at least a 30% improvement in back pain as measured with the 2-point numeric rating scale.
3. Improvement in depression scores will be correlated with improvement in CLBP scores.

The exploratory hypotheses to be tested are that:

During Step 2: Compared to subjects treated with DUL+CM, subjects treated with DUL+PST-DP will have improved outcomes in: 1) disability, 2) sleep, 2) functioning/quality of life, 3) caregiver burden/depression, and 5) analgesic use.

Detailed description:
This is a two-part study. Step 1 is an 8-week long open-label trial of duloxetine (DUL) + clinical management (CM), titrated up to 90 mg/day, for older adults with comorbid major depressive disorder (MDD) and chronic low back pain (CLBP). At week 8, if subjects have not responded, the dose of duloxetine is increased to 120 mg/day. Duloxetine will be increased and continued at 120 mg/day (or highest tolerated dose) for both randomized study groups (during step 2) to assure medication parity.

Step two starts at week 9 and includes those subjects whose MDD and/or CLBP has not met criteria for response during Step 1. At week 9 subjects will be randomized to receive treatment with either: 1) DUL 120 mg/day (or the highest tolerated dose)+ Problem Solving for Depression and Pain (PST-DP) or 2) DUL 120 mg/day (or highest tolerated dose) + CM. Step 2 will be delivered over the course of 8-10 sessions.

NOTE ADDED 1/5/16: THIS WAS TREATMENT DEVELOPMENT WORK CONDUCTED AS PART OF A CAREER DEVELOPMENT AWARD. ONLY THE FIRST OPEN-LABEL PART OF THE STUDY WAS COMPLETED, AND THESE RESULTS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED AND WILL BE REPORTED HERE ON CLINICALTRIALS.GOV

Arms:
arm 1: Duloxetine + clinical management

NOTE -- THIS WORK WAS CONDUCTED AS PART OF A CAREER DEVELOPMENT AWARD. THE CLINICALTRIALS.GOV DESCRIPTION OF THE STUDY WAS UPDATED 1/5/16 TO UPDATE THE OPEN LABEL NATURE OF THIS WORK. THIS IS WHAT IS REPORTED HERE AND HAS BEEN PEER REVIEWED AND PUBLISHED.

Interventions: intervention 1: Duloxetine
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Duloxetine up to 120 mg/day + Clinical Management

Protocol document: