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 Charles Raison, professor of human ecology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, conducted a small, double-blind trial to test whole-body hyperthermia as a novel treatment for major depression.
The research team, which included Christopher Lowry, associate professor of integrative physiology at CU-Boulder, 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,” Raison said.
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