Third-Party Funded Projects on Affective Disorders
TDM-Vigil (Pharmacovigilance in children and adolescents), funded by the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices
Concurrently with the pharmacovigilance project with geriatric psychiatric patients, a multi center project on pharmacovigilance regarding the use of antidepressants and antipsychotics in child and adolescent psychiatry is being conducted, lead by the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Würzburg. Its goal is to systematically observe and catalogue the effects, unwanted side-effects and interactions of (off-label) prescribed antidepressants and antipsychotics in childhood and adolescence, and to investigate the correlation of dose rate, blood level, co-medication, therapeutic effect and side effects. Apart from the standard and regular clinical examinations, blood samples are taken to determine the blood levels of the antidepressants and antipsychotics in the young patients' blood in the Laboratory for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring of the Department of Psychiatry Würzburg. This allows for determining age-specific therapeutic blood level ranges as well as possible age-specific risk constellations for individual drugs and medications.
