Efficacy of thiamine supplementation in improving depressive symptoms - evidence-based review

Abstract

Title: Efficacy of thiamine supplementation in improving depressive symptoms - Evidence-Based Review

Objective: to review the existing evidence regarding the effectiveness of thiamine supplementation in improving depressive symptoms in adult patients, compared to taking psychoactive drugs alone or placebo.

Design: Systematic Review

Site: Primary Care

Methods: Research question: Population – Adults with depressive symptoms; Intervention – Thiamine supplementation alone or associated with psychotropic drugs; Comparison: use of placebo or psychotropic drugs; Outcome – Improvement of depressive symptoms (according to DSM-V). The search was performed using the MeSH terms (("Depression" OR "Depression Disorder") AND "Thiamine"") in the selected sources. All opinion articles, classic review articles, and studies already included in meta-analyses or previously selected reviews were excluded. The strength of recommendation taxonomy scale (SORT) was used to assign levels of evidence and strength of recommendation.

Results: The search resulted in 3 articles that met the inclusion criteria, from which conclusions were drawn.

Conclusions: Statistically significant benefits of thiamine supplementation were demonstrated in some of the evaluated parameters, namely psychomotor slowing, mood, appetite/body weight, feeling of fatigue, and an acceleration of the pharmacological response with its concomitant use with Fluoxetine 20 mg. Thus, thiamine supplementation was assigned a Strength of Recommendation B by the SORT Scale, as existing studies of moderate quality are few, albeit patient oriented.