ReviewJournal of personalized medicine2023
Cortisol and the Dexamethasone Suppression Test as a Biomarker for Melancholic Depression: A Narrative Review.
Review in Journal of personalized medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Cortisol levels and depression suicide risk: a combined exploration of meta-analysis and case-control study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Translational interdisciplinary research on human chorionic gonadotropin's enhancement of neuroendocrine crosstalk: a novel medical hypothesis for systemic adjunctive treatment of psychiatric disorders.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Wild Flora Species from Romania with Anxiolytic and Antidepressant Potential: A Global Perspective-Narrative Review.Biomedicines · 2026Review
- Integrative analysis of miRNA expression profiles reveals distinct and common molecular mechanisms underlying broad diagnostic groups of severe mental disorders.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Article
- Review
- Physical Activity and Depression in Breast Cancer Patients: Mechanisms and Therapeutic Potential.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2025Review
- Article
- Repurposing Ketamine in the Therapy of Depression and Depression-Related Disorders: Recent Advances and Future Potential.Aging and disease · 2024Review
- Affective Prosody and Its Impact on the Neurology of Language, Depression, Memory and Emotions.Brain sciences · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The dexamethasone suppression test (DST) assesses the functionality of the HPA axis and can be regarded as the first potential biomarker in psychiatry. In 1981, a group of researchers at the University of Michigan published a groundbreaking paper regarding its use for diagnosing melancholic depression, reporting a diagnostic sensitivity of 67% and a specificity of 95%. While this study generated much enthusiasm and high expectations in the field of biological psychiatry, subsequent studies produced equivocal results, leading to the test being rejected by the American Psychiatric Association. The scientific reasons leading to the rise and fall of the DST are assessed in this review, suggestions are provided as to how the original test can be improved, and its potential applications in clinical psychiatry are discussed. An improved, standardized, and validated version of the DST would be a biologically meaningful and useful biomarker in psychiatry, providing a tool for clinicians caring for depressed patients in the areas of diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis, and predicting the risk of suicide. Additionally, such a test could be a crucial part in the generation of biologically homogenous patient cohorts, necessary for the successful development of new psychotropic medications.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.