Can a Brain “Biomarker” Guide Treatment of Depression?
Courtesy: Emory University
When a person seeks help for major depression, there are generally two options: medication or behavior therapy.
Whichever a doctor chooses, that initial treatment is effective only about 40% of the time.
A just-released study shows there could be a way to improve that percentage based on the individual patient, and it starts with a look at the person’s brain.
This broadcast version aired on Wednesday's All Things Considered
“We know there are abnormalities in the brain when people are depressed, and we know that different treatments impact those brain abnormalities in different ways,” says Dr. Helen Mayberg, a neurologist at Emory University and one of eight researchers who conducted the study.
Before treating study patients for depression, Mayberg’s team used a brain scan to look at how a region of the brain known as the anterior insula was breaking down sugar.
“If you had an overactive insula—so its sugar metabolism was higher than the rest of the brain –you did great with drug,” says Mayberg. “But if you had that pattern and had gotten therapy, it didn’t touch you.”
And the reverse was true.
If a patient’s insula was underactive, medication proved ineffective while therapy worked.
Mayberg says this is the first time a so-called biomarker has been pinpointed as a potential indicator for guiding treatment. But, she adds, future studies are needed to replicate the findings.
The article is published in the latest Journal of the American Medical Association – Psychiatry.
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