Postpartum depression research is saving lives today.

A dietary supplement could help prevent postpartum depression

It is rare for a researcher in any field to make a discovery that has the potential to fundamentally transform treatment and care. In the field of mental health neuroscience, Dr. Jeffrey Meyer, head of the Neuroimaging Program in Mood & Anxiety at CAMH’s Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, has already made two.

In 2015, Dr. Meyer discovered that the brains of people with depression had more inflammation—30 per cent more on average—than the brains of people who were not depressed.  The greater the inflammation, the more severe the depression.

It was such a seismic shift in thinking about mental illness and the brain that it has become one of the most highly-cited research studies internationally that CAMH has ever produced.

One out of seven or 13 per cent of women experience post-partum depression.

Just a few years later in 2017, Dr. Meyer published another ground-breaking study, this time on post-partum depression, the most common serious side-effect of childbirth. Dr. Meyer found in brain imaging scans that women suffering from postpartum depression had elevated levels of a brain protein known as ‘MAO-A’, which is associated with mood regulation. In response to this discovery, he created a dietary supplement kit designed to target this protein.

The nutritional kit consists of three supplements that were carefully selected to compensate for the surge in MAO-A. MAO-A breaks down three brain chemicals that help maintain mood: serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. When these chemicals are depleted, it can lead to feelings of sadness. MAO-A levels peak five days after giving birth, the same time when postpartum blues are most pronounced.

In 2017, the supplement kit received a U.S. patent, and is anticipated to become an integral part of a dietary supplement regimen for new mothers.

The results of Dr. Meyer’s clinical study showed that none of the new mothers who took the supplement experienced depressed mood in early postpartum. Depressed mood is strongly predictive of developing later clinical depression, suggesting that this supplement will successfully prevent postpartum depression. And because the treatment is a dietary supplement, the hope is that it will successfully prevent post-partum depression without any side-effects.

To realize the huge translational potential of Dr. Meyer’s innovative research, and to deliver it to women everywhere, CAMH has signed a deal with a global pharmaceutical company to assist in the development and commercialization of the dietary supplement. The product could be available to women around the world within the next few years.

Developing successful nutrition-based treatments, based on neurobiology, is rare in psychiatry. We believe our approach also represents a promising new avenue for creating other new dietary supplements for medicinal use.

Dr. Meyer continues to look for biomarker signatures and patterns that may help unravel the mysteries of the brain, both the specific kind of proteins used in the postpartum depression study as well as the functioning of the whole brain as found in the inflammation study.  

"I am very optimistic that over the next 20 years we are going to identify more specific aspects of the neurobiology of mental illness, and in particular Major Depressive Disorder, and be able to link those into the therapeutic streams and develop more individualized treatment."