The most interesting article this week is from Dowlati and colleagues assessing the effectiveness of a nutritional supplement to decrease risk for postpartum blues.  While intriguing, it is not clear how effective this intervention will prove to be.   We will have a post on this paper next week.  

 

Dowlati Y, Ravindran AV, Segal ZV, Stewart DE, Steiner M, Meyer JH.  Selective dietary supplementation in early postpartum is associated with high resilience against depressed mood.  Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Mar 13.

A postpartum supplement containing tyrosine, L-tryptophan, and blueberry extracts was used to decrease the risk of postpartum blues.


Estrogen Replacement Improves Verbal Memory and Executive Control in Oligomenorrheic/Amenorrheic Athletes in a Randomized Controlled Trial.

Baskaran C, Cunningham B, Plessow F, Singhal V, Woolley R, Ackerman KE, Slattery M, Lee H, Lawson EA, Eddy K, Misra M.  J Clin Psychiatry. 2017 Mar 14.

Young athletes with oligomenorrheic/amenorrheic and estrogen deficiency show improvements in verbal memory and executive control following 6 months of estrogen replacement.


A closer look at the preventative effect of antidepressants in postpartum depression.  Sharma V.  Arch Womens Ment Health. 2017 Apr;20(2):357-360.

The author reviews data regarding the prophylactic use of antidepressants to reduce the risk of postpartum depression.  


Perinatal suicidal ideation and behaviour: psychiatry and adversity.

Onah MN, Field S, Bantjes J, Honikman S.  Arch Womens Ment Health. 2017 Apr;20(2):321-331.

In a low resource community of women in South Africa, the prevalence of  suicidal ideation and behaviours (SIB) was 18% and was associated with psychiatric illness, most commonly MDD and any anxiety disorder. However, 54% of the women had no psychiatric diagnoses.  Other factors associated with SIB included lower socio-economic status, food insecurity, interpersonal violence, having more than one child, and history of suicide attempt.


Symptoms of anxiety and depression during pregnancy and their association with low birth weight in Chinese women: a nested case control study.

Yang S, Yang R, Liang S, Wang J, Weaver NL, Hu K, Hu R, Trevathan E, Huang Z, Zhang Y, Yin T, Chang JJ, Zhao J, Shen L, Dong G, Zheng T, Xu S, Qian Z, Zhang B.  Arch Womens Ment Health. 2017 Apr;20(2):283-290.

Women with depression or anxiety during pregnancy were not at higher risk of having a low birth weight (LBW) baby, but when both depression and anxiety are present during pregnancy, there was an increased risk of LBW (adjusted OR 1.29, 95% CI 1.07-1.57), and this association was most evident in women with preterm births.


Depression during the menopause transition: impact on quality of life, social adjustment, and disability.

Wariso BA, Guerrieri GM, Thompson K, Koziol DE, Haq N, Martinez PE, Rubinow DR, Schmidt PJ.  Arch Womens Ment Health. 2017 Apr;20(2):273-282.

Not so surprisingly, women with perimenopausal depression reported significantly decreased quality of life, social support, and increased disability compared with non-depressed perimenopausal women.


Serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) polymorphism and susceptibility to a home-visiting maternal-infant attachment intervention delivered by community health workers in South Africa: Reanalysis of a randomized controlled trial.

Morgan B, Kumsta R, Fearon P, Moser D, Skeen S, Cooper P, Murray L, Moran G, Tomlinson M.  PLoS Med. 2017 Feb 28;14(2):  Free Article

A maternal-infant attachment intervention delivered to impoverished pregnant women improved the security of maternal-infant bonding; this intervention was most effective when children possessed the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) variant.  This differential genetic susceptibility means that averaging across all participants may result in inaccurate and possibly misleading measures of efficacy.


Anxiety and neural responses to infant and adult faces during pregnancy.

Rutherford HJ, Byrne SP, Austin GM, Lee JD, Crowley MJ, Mayes LC.  Biol Psychol. 2017 Mar 5.

Women with anxiety during pregnancy were more likely to have increased responsiveness to neutral infant faces, as compared to women without anxiety.  Anxiety may result in deeper processing of neutral, emotionally ambiguous, infant faces during pregnancy. These findings may reflect that women with anxiety have an interpretive bias towards threat in response to neutral stimuli.


Improving discrimination in antepartum depression screening using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale.

Venkatesh KK, Kaimal AJ, Castro VM, Perlis RH.  J Affect Disord. 2017 Feb 24;214:1-7.

Using the EPDS during pregnancy with a cut-off score of <5 yielded the greatest discrimination and was able to identify women at low risk for postpartum depression.  Discrimination was improved when the antenatal EPDS was combined with a prior history of major depression before pregnancy; however, the negative predictive value was insufficient to substitute for postpartum screening.

 

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