Summary: A new reports whole body hyperthermia improved symptoms of major depression for as long as six weeks following a single treatment.

Source: University of Wisconsin Madison.

Raising the body temperature of depressed volunteers to the equivalent of a mild fever improved their symptoms of major depression for as long as six weeks after a single treatment, results from a new study show.

Researchers led by Dr. Charles Raison of the University of Wisconsin-Madison conducted a small, double-blind trial to test whole-body hyperthermia as a novel treatment for major depression.

They evaluated the depressed volunteers on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) and found that 60 percent of them had a response and 40 percent met the criteria for remission of depression during at least one assessment after having received the treatment.

“Our hope is to find better and faster-acting treatments for depression than the antidepressants currently in use,’’ says Raison. “We think that using heat to stimulate the skin activates serotonin-producing cells in the mid-brain, which then produce a change in how the brain functions. In a way, one might think of this pathway from the skin to the brain as a deep-brain stimulator crafted by evolution. We tap into this pathway because heat makes the brain feel happy.”

Raison announced the results today at the 2016 Meeting of the Society of Biological Psychiatry in Atlanta. The results were published online today in JAMA Psychiatry.

The researchers used a whole-body hyperthermia device to raise the body temperatures of 16 volunteers to 38.5 Celsius, the equivalent of about 101.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Another 14 were randomized to a “sham” procedure that had them lie inside the hyperthermia device with fans and lights, but only a small amount of heat, not the intense infrared heat that produced the full treatment.

“Our sham intervention was so realistic that most of the participants (10 of 14) thought they were receiving the real treatment,’’ says Raison. That is important, because it suggests the antidepressant response was not due primarily to placebo factors associated with the treatment.

The real hyperthermic treatment improved depression scores by a mean of 5.67 points more than the sham at week one and a mean difference of 4.83 points at six weeks after the treatment. The HDRS rates scores of 0 to 7 to be normal, 8 to 13 to indicate mild depression, 14 to 18 to indicate moderate depression and 19 and above to indicate severe and very severe depression.

Researchers screened 338 volunteers and wound up with 34 patients with HDRS scores of 16 and above. The two arms began with 17 volunteers each, but with dropouts, 15 wound up completing the whole-body hyperthermia and 14 the sham treatment.

Those receiving the active treatment were in a type of tent, and were heated on their chest by infrared lights and on their legs with infrared heating coils. After their body core temperature reached 38.5 degrees Celsius (usually after about an hour and half) the heat was turned off and they were allowed to cool for an hour.

A week after treatment, researchers who were blinded to whether the volunteers had the real treatment or not assessed their depression levels using HDRS. Further assessments were made at two, four and six weeks. Self-reports also showed lessening of symptoms, although not as dramatic. Both groups reported only mild adverse effects.

“We were surprised to see that the effect (of reduced depression symptoms) was still present six weeks after the initial treatment,’’ Raison says.

Co-author Christopher Lowry, associate professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado-Boulder, showed in an earlier study that whole-body heating activates neurons in the brain that synthesize the neurochemical serotonin, an effect that is shared by antidepressant drugs. In addition, Lowry said, “We know that warming the skin activates areas of the brain where activity is low in depressed patients.”

One brain area activated by heating the skin, the medial orbitofrontal cortex, is involved in the regulation of mood. This area of the brain responds to pleasant sounds, smells, images, tastes and other stimuli. A premise of the research is that certain sensory pathways evolved to mediate antidepressant-like responses. Lowry says depression is associated with over-activity of the brain’s default-mode network, which is engaged when a person is ruminating.

But throughout evolution, certain conditions made such a state of mind “extremely maladaptive,” Lowry observes. Extreme heat would demand that people shift their attention from internal thoughts to the external world.

Raison says that the current study extends results from an earlier open-treatment study his group did in Switzerland in inpatient volunteers with major depression. Hyperthermia has been used for many years, primarily in Europe, as part of a cancer-fighting regimen, although whole-body hyperthermia to treat cancer typically raises the body temperature to temperatures much higher than used in the depression studies.

According to Raison, the results of the small study are encouraging, but he cautions that because the sample size was small, more research is needed to determine how hyperthermia should be optimally delivered in terms of the temperature used and the amount of time patients are exposed to the heat. Additionally, the results may have been confounded by volunteers’ expectations that the treatment would work.

About this psychology research article

Raison is the Mary Sue and Mike Shannon Chair for Healthy Minds, Children & Families in the UW School of Human Ecology. He is also a member of the psychiatry faculty in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

Funding: The study was conducted at the University of Arizona and funded by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, the Depressive and Bipolar Disorder Alternative Treatment Foundation, the Institute for Mental Health Research, the Braun Foundation and Barry and Janet Lang and Arch and Laura Brown.

Source: Susan Lampert Smith – University of Wisconsin Madison

Image Source: This NeuroscienceNews.com image is adapted from the University of Wisconsin Madison press release.

Original Research: Abstract for “Whole-Body Hyperthermia for the Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial” by Clemens W. Janssen, PhD; Christopher A. Lowry, PhD; Matthias R. Mehl, PhD; John J. B. Allen, PhD; Kimberly L. Kelly, MPA; Danielle E. Gartner, BA; Angelica Medrano, BA; Tommy K. Begay, PhD; Kelly Rentscher, MA; Joshua J. White, BS; Andrew Fridman, BS; Levi J. Roberts, BA; Megan L. Robbins, PhD; Kay-u Hanusch, MSc; Steven P. Cole, PhD; and Charles L. Raison, MD in JAMA Psychiatry. Published online May 12 2016 doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2016.1031

Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article

[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]University of Wisconsin Madison. “Small Study Reveals Raising Body Temperature Could Help Relieve Symptoms of Depression.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 16 May 2016.

<https://neurosciencenews.com/depression-body-temperature-4244/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]University of Wisconsin Madison. (2016, May 16). Small Study Reveals Raising Body Temperature Could Help Relieve Symptoms of Depression. NeuroscienceNews. Retrieved May 16, 2016 from https://neurosciencenews.com/depression-body-temperature-4244/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]University of Wisconsin Madison. “Small Study Reveals Raising Body Temperature Could Help Relieve Symptoms of Depression.” NeuroscienceNews.

https://neurosciencenews.com/depression-body-temperature-4244/ (accessed May 16, 2016).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]

Abstract

Whole-Body Hyperthermia for the Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Importance Limitations of current antidepressants highlight the need to identify novel treatments for major depressive disorder. A prior open trial found that a single session of whole-body hyperthermia (WBH) reduced depressive symptoms; however, the lack of a placebo control raises the possibility that the observed antidepressant effects resulted not from hyperthermia per se, but from nonspecific aspects of the intervention.

Objective To test whether WBH has specific antidepressant effects when compared with a sham condition and to evaluate the persistence of the antidepressant effects of a single treatment.

Design, Setting, and Participants A 6-week, randomized, double-blind study conducted between February 2013 and May 2015 at a university-based medical center comparing WBH with a sham condition. All research staff conducting screening and outcome procedures were blinded to randomization status. Of 338 individuals screened, 34 were randomized, 30 received a study intervention, and 29 provided at least 1 postintervention assessment and were included in a modified intent-to-treat efficacy analysis. Participants were medically healthy, aged 18 to 65 years, met criteria for major depressive disorder, were free of psychotropic medication use, and had a baseline 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale score of 16 or greater.

Interventions A single session of active WBH vs a sham condition matched for length of WBH that mimicked all aspects of WBH except intense heat.

Main Outcomes and Measures Between-group differences in postintervention Hamilton Depression Rating Scale scores.

Results The mean (SD) age was 36.7 (15.2) years in the WBH group and 41.47 (12.54) years in the sham group. Immediately following the intervention, 10 participants (71.4%) randomized to sham treatment believed they had received WBH compared with 15 (93.8%) randomized to WBH. When compared with the sham group, the active WBH group showed significantly reduced Hamilton Depression Rating Scale scores across the 6-week postintervention study period (WBH vs sham; week 1: −6.53, 95% CI, −9.90 to −3.16, P

Conclusions and Relevance Whole-body hyperthermia holds promise as a safe, rapid-acting, antidepressant modality with a prolonged therapeutic benefit.

Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT01625546

“Whole-Body Hyperthermia for the Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial” by Clemens W. Janssen, PhD; Christopher A. Lowry, PhD; Matthias R. Mehl, PhD; John J. B. Allen, PhD; Kimberly L. Kelly, MPA; Danielle E. Gartner, BA; Angelica Medrano, BA; Tommy K. Begay, PhD; Kelly Rentscher, MA; Joshua J. White, BS; Andrew Fridman, BS; Levi J. Roberts, BA; Megan L. Robbins, PhD; Kay-u Hanusch, MSc; Steven P. Cole, PhD; and Charles L. Raison, MD in JAMA Psychiatry. Published online May 12 2016 doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2016.1031

Feel free to share this Neuroscience News.