Studies suggest that some people who experience clinical depression have brain inflammation. Inflammation is the body’s response to injury, but it can be increased in some people, which means the body is fighting itself when it doesn’t need to. The use of anti-inflammatory medication may have the potential to reduce brain inflammation, but this has not yet been proven through research.
The purpose of this research study is to find out if taking an anti-inflammatory medication (minocycline) in addition to standard antidepressant treatment might be effective in reducing depression symptoms in people with hard-to-treat or treatment-resistant depression.
We are looking for participants who are:
- 18 – 80 years old
- Diagnosed with depression
- Have tried 2 or more antidepressant treatments without improvement in depression symptoms
If you take part in this study, you will receive either minocycline or a placebo treatment for 12 weeks. During this time, you will meet with our research team five times to monitor how you respond to the medication. Some of these visits will be in-person at our downtown Toronto clinic and others can be done virtually. The first visit will take approximately 4 hours and the rest will take about 2 hours.
Your participation in this study will provide important information that may help to improve treatments for depression and could be beneficial to other patients in the future.
To learn more about joining our study, please call us at 416-535-8501 ext. 33758 or you can e-mail us at research.study@camh.ca.
You can also find more study details in our CAMH research listing.
REB: 135/2018