A new mobile app developed by researchers at the Child & Family Research Institute (CFRI) at BC Children

Around three-quarters of cancer patients who have major depression do not currently receive treatment for their depression, new research led by Oxford University has found. But the researchers show that a new treatment programme is strikingly more effective at reducing depression and improving quality of life among cancer patients than current care.

The team analysed data from more than 21,000 patients attending cancer clinics in Scotland and found that major depression is substantially more common in cancer patients than in the general population.

Major depression was most common in patients with lung cancer (13%) and lowest in those with genitourinary cancer (6%). Moreover, nearly three quarters (73%) of depressed cancer patients were not receiving treatment for their depression.

To address the problem of inadequate treatment, the researchers evaluated the effectiveness of a new treatment programme called ‘Depression Care for People with Cancer’ (DCPC) in a randomised trial called SMaRT Oncology-2.

The DCPC treatment programme is delivered by a team of specially trained cancer nurses and psychiatrists working in collaboration with the patient’s cancer team and general practitioner, and is given as part of cancer care. It is a systematic treatment programme that includes both antidepressants and psychological therapy.

The trial involved 500 adults with major depression and a cancer with a good prognosis (they had a predicted survival of more than 12 months), and compared DCPC with usual care.

The researchers found that the Depression Care for People with Cancer programme was strikingly more effective at reducing depression.

Professor Michael Sharpe from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford said: ‘The huge benefit that DCPC delivers for patients with cancer and depression shows what we can achieve for patients if we take as much care with the treatment of their depression as we do with the treatment of their cancer.’

At 6 months, 62% of the patients who received DCPC responded to treatment (at least a 50% reduction in the severity of their depression) compared with only 17% of those who received usual care. This benefit was sustained at 12 months.

DCPC also improved anxiety, pain, fatigue, functioning, and overall quality of life. Moreover, the cost of providing DCPC was modest (

Studies by vascular biologists at The Johns Hopkins Hospital could lead to new treatments for vascular disease.
This work was led by Dan Berkowitz, M.B.B.Ch., and Lewis Romer, M.D., both professors of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The studies focus on the balance between (good) nitric oxide, and (bad) oxidants

A non-invasive optical imaging device developed at Cedars-Sinai can provide early detection of changes that later occur in the brain and are a classic sign of Alzheimer’s disease, according to preliminary results from investigators conducting a clinical trial in Australia.

‘In preliminary results in 40 patients, the test could differentiate between Alzheimer’s disease and non-Alzheimer’s disease with 100 percent sensitivity and 80.6 percent specificity, meaning that all people with the disease tested positive and most of the people without the disease tested negative. The optical imaging exam appears to detect changes that occur 15-20 years before clinical diagnosis. It’s a practical exam that could allow testing of new therapies at an earlier stage, increasing our chances of altering the course of Alzheimer’s disease,’ said Shaun Frost, a biomedical scientist and the study manager at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. CSIRO is Australia’s national science agency.

Frost, first author of the AAIC 2014 abstract, will make the oral presentation. He said 120 participants of a full study of 200 had completed testing.

Keith Black, MD, professor and chair of Cedars-Sinai’s Department of Neurosurgery, director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute and the Ruth and Lawrence Harvey Chair in Neuroscience, said the accumulation of beta-amyloid plaque in the brain is a hallmark sign of Alzheimer’s, but current tests detect changes only after the disease has advanced to late stages. Researchers believe that as treatment options improve, early detection will be critical, but existing diagnostic methods are inconvenient, costly and impractical for routine screening.

‘PET scans require the use of radioactive tracers, and cerebrospinal fluid analysis requires that patients undergo invasive and often painful lumbar punctures, but neither approach is quite feasible, especially for patients in the earlier stages of disease,’ he said. Positron emission tomography, or PET, is the current diagnostic standard.

‘The retina, unlike other structures of the eye, is part of the central nervous system, sharing many characteristics of the brain. A few years ago, we discovered at Cedars-Sinai that the plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease occur not only in the brain but also in the retina. By ‘staining’ the plaque with curcumin, a component of the common spice turmeric, we could detect it in the retina even before it began to accumulate in the brain. The device we developed enables us to look through the eye

Antidepressants are known to provide effective pain relief for various chronic pain conditions; however, the jury is still out on their use in treating the millions of patients who suffer from acute or chronic pain following surgery.  A first-of-its-kind literature review suggests although a majority of studies report positive outcomes, there is currently insufficient evidence to support the clinical use of antidepressants for the treatment of postoperative pain.