Lithium Therapy for Corticosteroid-Induced Mood Disorder

Letter to the Editor

Sir: I read with interest the article by Wada et al., which investigated clinical characteristics and treatment of 9 cases of corticosteroid-induced mood disorder. I would like to comment on their pharmacotherapy as follows.
First, Wada et al. claimed that lithium should be carefully avoided because quite a few diseases treated with corticosteroids, such as nephrotic syndromes or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), provoke renal dysfunction. I cannot agree with their claim: I have treated 4 cases of steroid-induced depression in which lithium was remarkably effective and no severe side effects occurred.