New review shows why antidepressants often fail in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s depression

As depression accelerates suffering in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, researchers argue that the next generation of treatments must target the damaged brain circuits and molecular pathways that standard antidepressants often miss.

Review: Depression in neurodegenerative disease: neurobiological mechanisms and emerging treatments. Image Credit: Hanchana Art / Shutterstock

In a recent review published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, researchers collated decades of literature on the co-occurrence of depression with neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD), to help explain why standard antidepressants often show little or no efficacy in these populations.

The review further explores emerging treatments that aim to overcome conventional limitations by adopting precision medicine approaches to target disease-specific molecular and circuit dysfunction, thereby improving patients’ quality of life (QoL) and possibly influencing cognitive decline.