Antioxidant Biomolecules and Their Potential for the Treatment of Difficult-to-Treat Depression and Conventional Treatment-Resistant Depression.

Major depression is a devastating disease affecting an increasing number of people from a young age worldwide, a situation that is expected to be worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. New approaches for the treatment of this disease are urgently needed since available treatments are not effective for all patients, take a long time to produce an effect, and are not well-tolerated in many cases; moreover, they are not safe for all patients. There is solid evidence showing that the antioxidant capacity is lower and the oxidative damage is higher in the brains of depressed patients as compared with healthy controls. Mitochondrial disfunction is associated with depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders, and this dysfunction can be an important source of oxidative damage. Additionally, neuroinflammation that is commonly present in the brain of depressive patients highly contributes to the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). There is evidence showing that pro-inflammatory diets can increase depression risk; on the contrary, an anti-inflammatory diet such as the Mediterranean diet can decrease it. Therefore, it is interesting to evaluate the possible role of plant-derived antioxidants in depression treatment and prevention as well as other biomolecules with high antioxidant and anti-inflammatory potential such as the molecules paracrinely secreted by mesenchymal stem cells. In this review, we evaluated the preclinical and clinical evidence showing the potential effects of different antioxidant and anti-inflammatory biomolecules as antidepressants, with a focus on difficult-to-treat depression and conventional treatment-resistant depression.

Could protective measures for COVID-19 contribute to the worsening of OCD symptoms?

The COVID-19 outbreak has placed considerable strain on the wellbeing of individuals across the world, and resources have been already put in place to assess the psycho-social aftermath of this pandemic. With strict hygiene measures and recommendations now constituting the norm, we wonder specifically about those individuals that were heavily concerned by contamination, germs and viruses in the pre-COVID era. Patients affected by obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and specifically those of the contamination/washing subtype, might indeed be exceptionally vulnerable to an increase in symptom severity due to the current circumstances. Albeit only relating to the acute phase of this pandemic, evidence collected thus far offer valuable insights into whether this concern is substantiated. After reviewing some of the available results, we reason on the conclusions that we can currently draw, on the factors that might play a role in driving them and on those that might be worth focusing on as the pandemic is running its course.