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Major depression, formally known as major depressive disorder, or MDD, brings increased risk of suicide and is reported to cause the second-most years of disability after low-back pain. University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers have found that amounts of this microRNA are significantly elevated in the brains of experimental rats with induced depression from corticosterone treatment, in the post-death brains of humans diagnosed with MDD and in peripheral blood serum from living patients with MDD, according to a study by led by Yogesh Dwivedi, Ph.D., the Elesabeth Ridgely Shook Endowed Professor and director of Translational Research, UAB Mood Disorders Program, Department of Psychiatry. This microRNA -- miR-124-3p -- is thus a potential therapeutic target for novel drug development, and it can serve as a putative biomarker for MDD pathogenesis. Micro RNAs, or miRNAs, interact with messenger RNA after the miRNA is exported from the cell nucleus and processed by a team of e...

Postpartum psychosis almost always stems from bipolar disorder but is often missed because of its rarity and lack of research on the subject, according to the review from Northwestern Medicine, Stanford University and Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands. Compounding the problem, physicians are reluctant to prescribe lithium for breastfeeding women for fear that the drug will negatively impact the baby. However, a small number of lithium-treated mothers and breastfed babies have been studied and the infants had no adverse effects with careful followup, Wisner said. Lithium is the most effective and fast-acting drug to treat postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis increases the risk for a mother harming or killing her baby or herself. "More often than not, the risk of the medication is less than the risk of the uncontrolled disorder," said senior author Dr. Katherine Wisner, the Norman and Helen Asher Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Obstetri...