Oncopsychology affects and intensively increasing number of patients due to the growing prevalence of cancers and the rapid development of oncological therapies. The comorbidity between tumorous diseases and psychiatric disorders has been known for a long time but its significance has become outstanding in the recent years. The relationship between these two types of disorders is considerably complex and may have determining consequences for clinical practice therefore dealing with these conditions is a serious challenge for clinicians.
Our knowledge concerning the association of mental illnesses and oncological diseases has been undergoing a significant change in recent years thanks to big data researches and more precise measurements of psychiatric phenotypes. This review provides a summary of the latest epidemiological results related to comorbitiy between mental and oncological illnesses. The novel, more sophisticated studies reinforce the importance of managing comorbid patients in a multidisciplinary team.

Keywords: oncopsychology, mental illnesses in cancers, psychiatric disorder related cancers,
oncologic and psychiatric comorbidity, dual diagnosis in psychiatric patients

When facing comorbidity, effects of medicating one disorder on the other disease is a key question for the clinician. As depression influences both development and outcome of onco-logical diseases, early diagnosis and therapy, primarily with antidepressants, is of paramount importance. This paper gives a survey on the effects of antidepressants on comorbid mood disorders, on the course of cancerous diseases and on the tumor itself. Response to therapy is similar for patients with comorbid and primary depression, just as there is no significant difference in tolerability. Early studies have shown that antidepressants increase the risk of
tumor development, have negative effects on the outcome of oncological diseases and even increase mortality. However, recent epidemiological and clinical studies show opposing results and demonstrate beneficial action of antidepressants on various oncological diseases suchas glióma and hepatocellular cancer. Like any drug, antidepressants have effects not only on targets in the brain but also on other organs, hence on tumor tissues as well. Latest preclinical studies demonstrate that certain antidepressants facilitate apoptosis, autophagy of tumor cells and potentiate the efficacy of anticancer agents acting as chemosensitizers. Direct and indirect antitumor effects of antidepressants are proven, however, their clinical use requires
further studies focusing on the specificity of agents on different tumor types.
Keywords: comorbidity, oncological disease, depression, antidepressants

Positron emission tomography (PET) is a medical imaging method belonging to the realmof nuclear medicine. It has been a clinical research tool since the sixties but during the late nineties it became widely utilized in clinical practice too. PET technique requires special radioactive isotopes, which may be generated only in particle accelerators (cyclotrons) and their transport is limited owing to the short physical half-life. PET/CT was born from the com-bination of PET and CT (computer tomography). The first combined PET/CT scanner began to operate in 1998 and the method has been used in clinical practice since 2001. It is a hybrid (multi-modality) medical imaging equipment which can provide anatomical, morphologic (CT) and functional, metabolic information (PET) simultaneously. PET/CT imaging has gained
clinical acceptance mainly in oncology – owing to the attributes of the most frequently used PET tracer, fluoro-deoxy glucose (FDG) – and in a lesser extent in neuropsychiatry and cardiol-ogy. The authors in this paper review the basics and key indications of the method, the wider used radiofarmacons, including potential neurological and psychiatric applications, and the possible causes of false positivity and false negativity.

(Neuropsychopharmacol Hung 2018; 20(3): 99–111)

Keywords: positron emission tomography (PET), positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT), fluoro-deoxy glucose (FDG)