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CASE REPORT article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Psychopharmacology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1362221

Personalizing the use of trazodone in real-word patients: a study of three cases of depression with comorbidities

Provisionally accepted
Gianluca Rosso Gianluca Rosso 1Beatrice Benatti Beatrice Benatti 2,3Mauro Pettorruso Mauro Pettorruso 4Gaia Sampogna Gaia Sampogna 5Carmine Tomasetti Carmine Tomasetti 6*
  • 1 Department of Neuroscience, School of Medicine, University of Turin, Turin, Italy
  • 2 Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Luigi Sacco Hospital, Milan, Italy
  • 3 University of Milan, Milan, Italy
  • 4 Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, University of Studies G. d'Annunzio Chieti and Pescara, Chieti, Italy
  • 5 Department of Psychiatry, University of Campania 'Luigi Vanvitelli', Naples, Campania, Italy
  • 6 Dept of Mental Health, Alzheimer Centre of Giulianova, ASL Teramo, Giulianova, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Depressive disorders are leading contributors to global mental health-related burden, and they represent a challenge for real world clinicians, due to the low rates of remission although the high availability of treatments. Often, depression shows in the contexts of multiple chronic comorbidities, thus requiring a precise and accurate management of pharmacological treatments to avoid interactions and side effects. These criticalities call for the need of new strategies of treatment, which may include new insights in the pharmacological properties of currently available antidepressant drugs, to enhance their efficacy in the different contexts in which depression may arise. Trazodone is the prototype of the serotonin antagonist/reuptake inhibitor antidepressants (SARIs). Due to the malleability granted by its multiple formulations, trazodone is frequently used to treat depression, both as add-on to other antidepressants and as monotherapy, with satisfying results. Moreover, its tolerability makes it one the most prescribed antidepressant in patients with poly-treated comorbid medical illness, especially in the elderly. Herein, a case series has been presented, regarding the use of trazodone in patients with complex comorbid diagnoses or distressing side effects. Each of the three cases has been discussed in three specific Round Tables, involving expert clinicians in the fields of Psychiatry, Neurology, General Practice, and Geriatrics using the Nominal Group Technique. The ideas collected have been used to integrate the cases and the discussion with the intent of facilitating accessibility to the widest audience of physicians and clinical workers in different clinical practice contexts. The final aim of this paper is to promote an increasingly personalized use of trazodone in real-world patients with depression.

    Keywords: SARI, SSRI, Comorbidity, Parkinson's disease, sexual dysfunc\ons, cogni\ve decline

    Received: 27 Dec 2023; Accepted: 30 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Rosso, Benatti, Pettorruso, Sampogna and Tomasetti. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Carmine Tomasetti, Dept of Mental Health, Alzheimer Centre of Giulianova, ASL Teramo, Giulianova, 64100, Italy

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.