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Fotios C. Papadopoulos, MD, PhD

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

We read with great interest the study of Barton et al,¹ which provides new insights into brain serotonin metabolism and its possible implications in the pathogenesis of major depression by applying innovative, state-of-the-art techniques. We would like to raise 2 methodological issues.

To avoid a confounding effect of serotonergic neuronal systems activated by sunlight, Barton et al selected healthy volunteers from a large pool of subjects to achieve matching for sunlight hours on the day of the catheter sampling. However, even though sunlight duration may be a suitable measure of sunlight exposure in large epidemiological studies with homogenous samples, it may not be optimal when studying smaller and heterogeneous groups, such as patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and healthy controls. In the latter case, individual history of exposure to sunlight could have been used in addition to sunlight duration. Depressed individuals may be less . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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