Corticotropin-Releasing Factor in Depression and Suicide (IN: Current Issues of Suicidology, ed. by H J Moller, A Schmidtke & R Welz)

This study analyzes 138 psychiatric patients from a Hungarian mental hospital. The authors find that there is an overproduction of the hypothalamic-pitituary-adrenocortical (HPA) stimulating neuropepetide corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) within the central nervous system in psychiatric patients with major depression. The authors conclude that CSF CRF immunoreactivity appears to be unrelated to the actual suicidal behavior & is only parallel with the depressive sydrome.