The impact of ziprasidone in combination with sertraline on visually-evoked event-related potentials in depressed patients with psychotic features

Introduction: The use of atypical antipsychotics in major depression complicated by psychotic features has not been extensively investigated. Event-related potentials (ERP) have been reported to be impaired in depressed patients, probably due to serotonergic hypofunction in major depression (Hetzel et al. 2004). The objective of this study was to examine the impact of a combination therapy with ziprasidone and sertraline on ERP in major depression with psychotic features. Methods: 19 patients (12 women, 7 men) with major depression with psychotic features were treated with ziprasidone (81.5±33.4mg/d) and sertraline (167.9±19.5mg/d). The average age was 50.6±14.7 years. Before and after four weeks of treatment visually-evoked ERP (P300– oddball paradigm) were investigated. Results: Combination treatment with ziprasidone and sertraline over 4 weeks was associated with a significant decrease (p=0.033) of P300 latencies from baseline (487.09±92.45ms) to week 4 (440.18±41.77ms). After a four week treatment significantly (p=0.008) fewer patients (2 from 13) showed pathologically P300 latencies (>450ms) than at baseline (10 from 15). Discussion: Our data are in line with previous studies (Hetzel et al. 2004; Karaaslan et al. 2003) showing a decrease of prolonged P300 latencies by antidepressant treatment. For the first time our data show that also ziprasidone treatment in major depression with psychotic features leads to a normalisation of P300 latencies.

This study was supported by Pfizer, Deutschland