Abstract
Antidepressants belonging to the class of monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI) such as phenelzine have long been known to drastically suppress REM sleep. Sleep and the electroencephalogram (EEG) in sleep and waking were studied in three depressed patients at regular time intervals before, during and after 6 to 18 months of phenelzine treatment. While REM sleep was initially eliminated in all patients, short REM sleep episodes reappeared after three to six months of medication. Total sleep time and EEG slow-wave activity (SWA, spectral power within 0.75–4.5 Hz) in nonREM sleep (stages 1–4) were not changed. In contrast, EEG theta frequency activity (TFA, power within 4.75–8.0 Hz) during a 5-min wake interval recorded prior to the sleep episodes was initially enhanced, and tended to correlate negatively with the percentage of REM sleep (p = .06). This observation indicates that compensatory REM sleep mechanisms may occur in wakefulness during chronic MAOI treatment.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to dedicate this manuscript to Dr. J. Christian Gillin and thank him cordially for his generous support. We thank R. Wong, A. Schlosser and D. Sweat for their help with data collection, Drs. E. Raimo and B. Schnierow for clinical care, Dr. A. A. Borbély for lending us two PS-1 recording systems, and Drs. P. Achermann, C. Kopp and I. Tobler for comments on the manuscript. The study was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (823A-0566161), the National Institute of Mental Health (MH38738), the UCSD MHCRC (MH30914), the General Clinical Research Center (M01-RR00827), the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the UCSD Fellowship in Psychopharmacology and Psychobiology.
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Landolt, HP., de Boer, L. Effect of Chronic Phenelzine Treatment on REM Sleep: Report of Three Patients. Neuropsychopharmacol 25 (Suppl 1), S63–S67 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0893-133X(01)00321-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0893-133X(01)00321-9
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