Dear Colleagues:

Welcome to the July issue of Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience. We start the issue with this month’s installment of The Interface, in which Sansone and Sansone examine the relationship between allergies and anxiety and mood syndromes. Research shows that there may be a number of potential variables that mediate this relationship. The authors review and discuss these variables.

Next, Howe shares with the reader how clinicians may be able to help their patients with dementia, as well as the patients’ caregivers, through nonmedical interventions in this month’s Update on Alzheimer’s.

Following this, we are pleased to present an interesting and unique review article by Shen et al. Behind every approved drug, there are carefully planned and executed clinical trials that proved the drug’s effectiveness and efficacy. As practicing clinicians, the readers of this journal may not be fully aware of the amount of time and money that goes into designing and implementing an effective study. In this article, the authors use a recently completed failed study to illustrate how adaptive trial designs can increase efficiency of psychiatric drug development. The design of the study allowed the investigators to detect study futility, which allowed for early study termination and thus prevented more patients from needlessly undergoing treatment by the study drug as well as prevented additional time and expense by the investigators and study sponsor.

Following this, Jaimchariyatam et al study prevalence and clinical correlates of alpha-delta sleep in major depressive disorder. The authors found that patients with major depressive disorder have a higher prevalence of alpha-delta sleep, which is associated with daytime sleepiness in patients with major depressive disorder.

Next, Corrigan et al review four cases of Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (TTC), a rare cardiac syndrome most often occurring in post-menopausal women after an acute episode of severe emotional or physical stress. In the authors’ cases, TCC was preceded by and concurrent with exacerbations of psychiatric illness rather than after acute episodes of stress. In addition to further studies to help better understand the connection between the heart and mind, the authors suggest that cardiologists and psychiatrists be aware of this association.

And finally, on a more lighthearted side of things, Meymandi asks our readers, “Did you know that Thomas Jefferson loved music?” Read Meymandi at Large this month and find out just how much!

Sincerely,
Amir Kalali, MD
Editor, Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience?