The Effect of Acute Minocycline Administration on Emotional Processing and Cognition in Healthy Volunteers
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2018-10-25
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
There is growing interest in the possibility of producing more effective antidepressant
treatments that target a wider range of pathways involved in depression, including
anti-inflammatory and anti-glutamatergic systems. Minocycline is a novel pharmacological
agent; in addition to its antibiotic and anti-inflammatory properties, it also acts in the
brain as an anti-glutamatergic and anti-oxidant agent. Since both excessive glutamate and
oxidative stress are implicated in major depression, and appear to be connected to
pro-inflammatory activity, this drug offers a unique tool with which the investigators can
measure the effects of targeting these pathways on emotional processing. Participants will
receive a single dose of either the drug (200 mg minocycline) or placebo, and will then
undergo a well-validated computerised battery of emotional processing tasks that have
previously been shown to be sensitive to standard antidepressant drugs. Tasks include
presentation of positive and negative emotional words or pictures, to which participants'
responses are measured. These tasks have been widely used previously without any adverse
effects.