340 http://psy.psychiatryonline.org Psychosomatics 46:4, July-August 2005 Does Somatosensory Amplification Decrease With Antidepressant Treatment? KEMAL SAYAR, M.D. ARTHUR J. BARSKY, M.D. HUSEYIN GULEC, M.D. Somatosensory amplification refers to a tendency to experience somatic and visceral sensations as unusually intense, noxious, and disturbing. The authors wanted to determine whether somato- sensory amplification is a stable construct or whether it might change with antidepressant ther- apy. Fifteen patients with fibromyalgia and 17 patients with major depressivedisorder received antidepressant treatment and were assessed after 6 and 12 weeks of treatment. Amplification scores responded to antidepressant treatment in patients with major depression but not in pa- tients with fibromyalgia, despite a decrease in the levels of depression in both groups. When change in depression and anxiety scores was partialled out from change in somatosensory ampli- fication scores, the amplification scores did not change significantly in either the depressed or the fibromyalgia groups. Given the small numbers and the marginal significance of the results, the authors are unable to say definitely just how independent of depression somatosensory amplifica- tion is. Whether somatosensory amplification is a measure of depression per se should be tested in a more definitive and larger future study. (Psychosomatics 2005; 46:340–344) Received Nov. 13, 2003; revision received Sept. 17, 2004; accepted Oct. 28, 2004. From the Bakirkoy Mental Health Training and Research Hos- pital, Istanbul, Turkey; and the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medi- cal School, Boston. Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Sayar, Inonu caddesi Sumko Sitesi, K 2 Blok D:11, Kozyatagi 81090, Istanbul, Turkey; kemalsayar@hotmail.com (e-mail). Copyright  2005 The Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine. S omatosensory amplification refers to the tendency of experiencing somatic and visceral sensations as unusu- ally intense, noxious, and disturbing. It involves bodily hy- pervigilance, the predisposition to focus on certain weak and infrequent bodily sensations, and a tendency to ap- praise them as pathological and symptomatic of disease, rather than normalizing them. 1 Alhough originally in- tended to account for the symptom reporting of hypochon- driacal patients, 2 the amplification of benign bodily sen- sations may be related to more general processes of somatic symptom reporting and health appraisal. 3,4 The Somato- sensory Amplification Scale is a self-report questionnaire developed to assess amplification. It remains unclear to what extent this scale captures an underlying mediating process of symptom amplification. In two studies with uni- versity students, Aronson and colleagues 5 found that the Somatosensory Amplification Scale correlated with mea- sures of symptom reporting and with several indices of general distress, including anxious and depressive symp- toms and negative emotionality. The authors concluded that the Somatosensory Amplification Scale is more likely an index of negative emotionality and general distress than a valid measure of somatic sensitivity. On the contrary, in a study of psychiatric outpatients, Somatosensory Ampli- fication Scale scores were significantly associated with SCL-90 somatization scores independent of gender, pres- ence of physical disorder, and level of anxiety and depres- sion. 6 In a similar vein, Sayar et al. 7 suggested that soma- tosensory amplification as measured by the Somatosensory Amplification Scale predicts somatic symptom reporting