Conditions: Bipolar Depression
Keywords: Bipolar Depression Incomplete Response
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 29
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether addition of memantine to bipolar depression patients who have had an incomplete response to lamotrigine (Lamictal) which is frequently used to treat bipolar depression in the clinical setting. At present, memantine is approved for use in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease or dementia, but not for use for the treatment of bipolar depression. Subjects will be asked to participate because they are suffering from bipolar depression associated and have had an inadequate response to lamotrigine. Subjects will have to be on at least 100 mg per day, for at least 4 weeks.

Detailed description:
Hypothesis/Objectives:

H1: Lamotrigine inadequate-response patients augmented with memantine for 8 weeks will have significantly greater improvement on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) and Clinical Global Improvement (CGI) scale compared to patients augmented with placebo.

H2: Lamotrigine inadequate-response patients augmented with memantine for 8 weeks will have significantly greater improvement of scores on the Selective Reminding Test (SRT), the Digit Span Test, the Stroop Test, and Trail Making Test (TMT) than patients augmented with placebo.

Study Population:

We will study 40 bipolar disorder depressed (BDD) outpatients (20 in each arm) recruited from the outpatient Mood Disorders Clinic and by advertisement.

Arms:
arm 1: Placebo daily arm 2: Daily dose Memantine

Interventions: intervention 1: Memantine intervention 2: Placebo
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Memantine will be given orally. Subjects will be started at a dose of 5 mg for the first week and then increased by 5 mg every week up to a maximum of 20 mg depending on response and tolerance and will be kept at that level for the rest of the study. This is an 8 week study. intervention 2: No active medication, only placebo

Protocol document: