Nasal spray may help depression

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - American soldiers are at risk for suicide. Data shows the rate for Iraqi and Afghanistan vets has shot up 20 percent in just one year.

While the causes may vary, a researcher at the Indiana University School of Medicine believes he may have an answer for those soldiers who have suicidal thoughts: TRH, or thyrotropic releasing hormone.

Dr. Michael Kubeck, who is an associate professor at the School of Medicine has studied TRH over 30 years. He says it exists in the body already and gives a person a temporary feeling of contentedness.

"It gives you a feeling of well being," says Kubeck. "I like to think of it, as kind of a noise filter, too much activity it slows it down, too little activity, it lifts."

The trouble with TRH is how a patient has had to take it. To get the amount needed in quick fashion, a patient would have to submit to an injection directly into one's spinal fluid, a method not only painful but impractical. Dr. Kubeck's colleagues in Seattle developed an atomizer, that would deliver a mist laden with TRH, which would travel directly to neurons in the brain.

But Kubeck says one more step is needed, and that is to attach TRH to a nanoparticle that can cross neurons, deliver the medicine, and then  degrade without harming the patient. Clinical trials to test that system are getting underway in the coming months, with a $3,000,000 dollar grant from the Army.

Essentially, Dr. Kubeck sees veterans, who under the care of a psychiatrist or psychologist, struggle with suicidal ideation, take prescribed inhalations of TRH with the atomizer to achieve a sense of well being. He hopes that while that soldier is undergoing treatment and possibly waiting for a stronger antidepressant to kick in, TRH could ease the suicidal thoughts.

Dr. Kubeck hopes the system will achieve FDA approval. He believes it could
be available to veterans and even civilians by 2014 or 2015.