- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Patients
with chronic brain diseases such as Parkinson's disease and epilepsy have
an unusually high rate of depression, too -- suggesting links between the
conditions, doctors said on Wednesday.
-
- Two reports in the journal Neurology said doctors and
patients alike were unaware of the link and that patients often went untreated
for their depression.
-
- "Many patients assume that it's normal to feel this
way. They might say, 'If you had Parkinson's disease, you'd feel this way
too'," said Dr. Irene Richard, a neurologist at the University of
Rochester Medical Center in New York.
-
- "That's not true. If you treat the depression, they'll
still have the other symptoms of the disease, but they feel better. It's
one aspect of the disease that may be very treatable."
-
- It is not simply being disabled that causes the depression,
she said.
-
- "People diagnosed with other serious diseases that
may also be disabling, such as rheumatoid arthritis, aren't nearly as likely
to become depressed," Richard said.
-
- She and colleague Dr. William McDonald found that nearly
half of all patients with Parkinson's also have depression and propose
that there could be a physical link between the two conditions.
-
- Researchers at Columbia University in New York, for instance,
have found a gene known to cause a movement disorder known as dystonia
causes a type of early-onset depression.
-
- Parkinson's is also a movement disorder, caused by the
destruction of brain cells that produce an important message-carrying chemical
called dopamine.
-
- An estimated 1 million people in North America have Parkinson's
disease.
-
- A second study found a strong association between depression
and epilepsy, which can cause seizures.
-
- Dr. Alan Ettinger of the Long Island Jewish Medical Center
found that 36.5 percent of 775 patients with epilepsy had symptoms of depression
and 35.8 percent of them had never discussed this with their doctors.
-
- An estimated 2.5 million Americans have epilepsy, while
depression is the most common psychiatric disorder, affecting up to 1 in
10 Americans.
-
- "When selecting an anti-epileptic treatment, clinicians
should strongly consider using agents that not only will help epilepsy
but may also improve symptoms of depression," Ettinger said.
-
- "Better treatment may also help these patients improve
their overall quality of life, particularly in work, social and family
domains."
-
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