Nagoya University · Medicine
Professor Kunihiro Iwamoto's research lab specializes in psychopharmacology and clinical psychopharmacology, with a primary focus on evaluating the impact of psychotropic medications on driving performance and cognitive function. The lab investigates how acute and chronic administration of antidepressants, anxiolytics, and other psychotropic drugs affect real-world tasks such as road tracking and reaction control. Their work emphasizes the development of evidence-based evaluation methods to assess medication safety in daily activities, particularly for patients with mental disorders.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
Acute doses of DZP significantly impaired the harsh-braking performance as compared to acute doses of TSP. These findings suggest that TSP may be used more safely in patients' driving activities.
Acute treatment of mirtazapine impaired road-tracking performance and increased sleepiness, but sedative effects disappeared under repeated administrations. Trazodone did not affect driving performance or cognitive function under acute or repeated administrations. Both initial sedative effects and pharmacological profiles should be taken into consideration when using sedative antidepressants.
We conclude that partly remitted depressive patients under steady-state pharmacologic treatment do not differ from healthy controls with respect to driving performance, which seems to be more affected by psychosocial functioning than by pharmacologic agents. This, however, should be investigated systematically in an off/on study.
Although automobile driving is necessary for many people, including patients with mental disorders, the influence of psychotropic drugs on driving performance remains unclear and requires scientific verification. Therefore, the objective of this study was to conduct a review of the literature in order to aid the development of a valid evaluation method regarding the influence of medication on driving performance. We conducted a literature search using two sets of terms on PubMed. One set was rel
Amitriptyline produces a concentration-related impairment on road-tracking performance. Therapeutic monitoring of amitriptyline would be useful for predicting the difficulties involved while driving.
Mirtazapine 7.5 mg did not cause driving impairment compared with mirtazapine 15 mg, while both doses of mirtazapine produced subjective somnolence. The increase in mirtazapine had no detrimental effects on psychomotor performance. Initial low-dose mirtazapine may be safer for automobile driving than the normal starting dose.
This study revealed the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and convergent and discriminant validities of the NSFQ.
jRCTs041210024.
As these three psychotropic drugs have differential effects on plasma BDNF levels under mental stress after 4 h post-dosing, antidepressants, unlike anxiolytics, might have a prompt positive effect on the mental stress response.
Our study results suggest that Fitbit accuracy is reduced in the presence of comorbid clinical symptoms. Although user-friendly, Fitbit has limitations that should be considered when assessing sleep in patients with psychiatric disorders.
This study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04108351, on September 30, 2019. Ethics approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee at Hakata Clinic and the Nagoya University Medical School Hospital Bioethics Review Committee.
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