• Maurizio Fava, Asli Memisoglu, Michael E Thase, J Alexander Bodkin, Madhukar H Trivedi, Marc de Somer, Yangchun Du, Richard Leigh-Pemberton, Lauren DiPetrillo, Bernard Silverman, and Elliot Ehrich.
• From the Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston; Alkermes, Inc., Waltham, Mass.; the Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia; McLean Hospital, Belmont, Mass.; and the Department of Psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas.
• Am J Psychiatry. 2016 May 1; 173 (5): 499-508.

ObjectiveMajor depressive disorder has been associated with dysregulation of the endogenous opioid system. The authors sought to determine whether opioid modulation achieved through administration of ALKS 5461, a combination of a μ- and κ-opioid partial agonist, buprenorphine, and a μ-opioid antagonist, samidorphan, would exhibit antidepressant activity in patients with major depression.MethodA multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, two-stage sequential parallel comparison design study was conducted in adults with major depression who had an inadequate response to one or two courses of antidepressant treatment. Participants were randomly assigned to receive adjunctive treatment with 2 mg/2 mg of buprenorphine/samidorphan (the 2/2 dosage group), 8 mg/8 mg of buprenorphine/samidorphan (the 8/8 dosage group), or placebo. Antidepressant effect was measured based on change from baseline to the end of 4 weeks of treatment on the 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D), the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), and the Clinical Global Impressions severity scale (CGI-S).ResultsCompared with the placebo group, there were significantly greater improvements in the 2/2 dosage group across the three depression outcome measures (HAM-D: -2.8, 95% CI=-5.1, -0.6; MADRS: -4.9, 95% CI=-8.2, -1.6; CGI-S: -0.5, 95% CI=-0.9, -0.1). There was also evidence of improvement in the 8/8 dosage group, although it did not achieve statistical significance. Overall, the buprenorphine/samidorphan combinations were well tolerated, and there was no evidence of opioid withdrawal on treatment discontinuation.ConclusionsThe buprenorphine/samidorphan combination is a novel and promising candidate for treatment of major depressive disorder in patients who have an inadequate response to standard antidepressants.

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