Nelson J C, Mazure C M, Jatlow P I
Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06510.
Am J Psychiatry. 1990 Nov;147(11):1488-92. doi: 10.1176/ajp.147.11.1488.
The authors examined the value of the dexamethasone suppression test (DST) for predicting response of patients with unipolar, nonpsychotic major depression to 1 week of hospitalization without antidepressant drugs and to a 4-week trial of desipramine at a fixed plasma level. The rates of response to hospitalization without drug treatment (defined as a score of 12 or less on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression) were not significantly different for the patients with a positive DST and those with a negative DST. This finding differs from those of prior studies of the DST and response to placebo. The responses of the DST-positive and DST-negative patients to desipramine also did not differ, a finding that replicates those in some prior reports.
