Action of acetyl-L-carnitine in association with mianserine on depressed old people

Recent knowledge on the role of neuromediators on senescence encourages therapeutic intervention aiming at the improvement of cerebral function by manipulating the neurotransmittal system. This would be particularly useful in the therapy of patients showing deteriorating performances with depressed mood. The known cholinomimetic and serotoninomimetic effects of LAC encouraged us to probe the therapeutic validity of LAC on aged patients with involutive depression. A simple blind test was performed on 20 patients 10 of which were treated with 1 g/day of LAC and another group of 10 patients was treated with the placebo for 40 days. Both the above groups were treated with 30 mg/day of mianserine in the first 20 days of the experimental period. The psychomatric test administered were Hachinski (t0) scale, HDRS, LNNB (t0, t20, t40) and routine hematochemical tests (t0, t40). The results obtained, indicated a significant improvement in the symptoms for HDRS in the LAC treated group. Also patients' cognitive performances, as per LNNB, significantly improved, whereas that of memory and of the intellectual processes, despite its statistical insignificance, evidenced a slow but gradual improvement.