Effects of Erythropoietin on Cognition and Neural Activity in Mood Disorders
Status:
Recruiting
Trial end date:
2021-02-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
The present trial consists of 2 sub-studies that investigate important novel aspects of
treatment with erythropoietin (EPO) on cognitive dysfunction in bipolar disorder (BD) and
recurrent unipolar depressive disorder (UD) (defined as minimum 2 treatment-requiring
depressive episodes). The aims of the trial are three-fold. We aim to investigate the effects
of 12 weekly recombinant human EPO infusions on cognition in (i) healthy people with
cognitive impairment (substudy 1) and (ii) patients with remitted BD or recurrent UD
(substudy 2), and (iii) explore early treatment-associated neural activity changes that may
predict subsequent cognitive improvement.
It is hypothesized that:
i. 12 weekly EPO infusions improve cognition in healthy first-degree relatives and remitted
BD patients in comparison with saline.
ii. EPO vs. saline-treated participants will display early cognition-related neural activity
in the frontal lobes, which will correlate with cognitive improvement.
Phase:
Phase 2
Details
Lead Sponsor:
Lars Vedel Kessing
Collaborators:
Lundbeck Foundation Mental Health Services in the Capital Region, Denmark