Role of vitamin D supplementation as adjunctive therapy to escitalopram in patients of major depressive disorder: a 8 week prospective, randomized, interventional, clinical study

Abstract

Background: Depression is a major public health problem and occurs in persons of all ages, and is associated with increased morbidity, soaring costs for treatment and reduced productivity and quality of life. Vitamin D is involved in numerous brain processes including neuroimmunomodulation, neuroprotection, neuroplasticity, regulation of neurotrophic factors, and making it biologically plausible to be associated with depression. Aim of the present study is to compare the therapeutic effects of vitamin D given along with escitalopram versus escitalopram given alone in patients with major depressive disorder. Methods: In this prospective, randomized, interventional clinical study, 60 patients with a diagnosis of major depressive disorder based on ICD-10 criteria were randomly assigned into two groups, one group received 60000IU vitamin D3 weekly plus 10 mg escitalopram OD daily while the other group received escitalopram10 mg OD daily alone for 8 weeks. Depression severity was assessed at 2-week intervals using the 24-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS). Serum 25(OH) vitamin D levels were measured in all the patients at baseline and after intervention.Result: Fifty nine patients completed the trial. Depression severity based on HDRS decreased significantly after intervention, with a significant difference between the two groups. The vitamin D3+escitalopram combination was significantly better than escitalopram alone from the fourth week of treatment. Conclusion: Role of vitamin D in mood disorder and its dietary supplementation is effective as an adjuvant treatment along with SSRIs in depressive disorders, especially in vitamin D deficient patients.

Lower serum 25-hydroxycholecalciferol is associated with depressive symptoms in older adults in Southern Brazil

“…A growing body of literature has investigated the potential effect of vitamin D on depression and its promising results, such as its prospective role as an adjuvant in drug therapy [89][90][91][92]. This issue is still controversial and may be explained by several methodological differences, such as self-reported diagnosis for depression, different vitamin D reference values used, and various methods for serum vitamin D analysis [33,[93][94][95].…”

“…This issue is still controversial and may be explained by several methodological differences, such as self-reported diagnosis for depression, different vitamin D reference values used, and various methods for serum vitamin D analysis [33,[93][94][95]. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings, and vitamin D supplementation may become a convenient and low-cost treatment [33,91]. Moreover, depression is a disease requiring high treatment costs; therefore, there is a substantial gap in the necessity and availability of therapy; consequently, a significant population of depressed individuals are left untreated in low-and middle-income countries [28,96].…”