Sustained antidepressive effect of repeated partial sleep deprivation.

In a naturalistic clinical trial we administered three partial sleep deprivations (PSD) within one week to a diagnostically heterogeneous sample of 30 depressed patients and applied serially three dexamethasone suppression tests (DST). We observed that this PSD treatment induced sustained clinical improvement independently from nosological attribution. Abnormal DST results prior to PSD treatment failed to predict clinical course, and normalized after beneficial response.