SPECIALE SOPSI 2016: Maurizio Fava, trent'anni di ricerca in psichiatria HD

Maurizio Fava ha ricevuto il PREMIO SOPSI 2016 per la Ricerca Scientifica in Psichiatria. In questo video racconta la sua vita di ricercatore in campo psichiatrico negli Stati Uniti. Dr. Fava is currently Vice Chair, Department of Psychiatry and Director of the Depression Clinical and Research Program (DCRP) at the Massachusetts General Hospital, as well as Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Director of the DCRP since 1990, Dr. Fava has expanded the program significantly, increasing the spending budget from $100,000 to over $3,000,000 per year. In addition to his numerous clinical trials and studies in treatment resistant depression, Dr. Fava has contributed significantly to the field of psychiatric research in a number of other areas. He has identified a subtype of depressive disorder characterized by marked irritability and “anger attacks.” His innovative work has led to the discovery that these individuals present a blunted prolactin response to fenfluramine challenge, are more likely to have white matter hyperintensities, and may selectively respond to SSRIs. In addition, Dr. Fava has conducted important investigations on the role of folate deficiency in depression and on the efficacy in depression of one carbon cycle elements with putative antidepressant effects such as s-adenosyl-methionine (SAMe) and methylfolate. His pioneering work in this area has led to his current-R-01 grant on the efficacy of SAMe in major depressive disorder (MDD). He has conducted and published the first prospective, placebo-controlled study of discontinuation-emergent adverse events of the newer antidepressants and he has designed and developed a protocol for the first, large multicenter study on the effects of abrupt interruption of SSRI treatment. He has completed a large single-site study of bupropion augmentation of the nicotine patch in depressed smokers (as part of one of his previous R-01s) and he is currently the PI of a large U-01 aimed at developing new treatments for nicotine dependence. He has developed with Dr. David Schoenfeld a novel design to address the problem of excessive placebo response in antidepressant trials and to markedly reduce sample size requirements for trials (a patent has been filed on his behalf by Partners on this design). He has also been very interested in developing new instruments to measure the effects of antidepressants treatments, and several of his validated instruments (such as the DESS scale, SFQ scale, and the CPFQ scale) are being used by clinical investigators in the US and abroad. Because of his ability to collaborate very effectively with PCPs in research projects such as STAR*D, he has been recently named co-Medical Director of Partners Research and Education Program (PREP). With respect to his publications, Dr. Fava has authored or co-authored over 300 original articles published in refereed medical journals with international circulation. The citation impact of Dr. Fava’s work is extremely high,