How to Fight Depression Faster

Walt and Pizzagalli's research seeks to personalize depression treatment, improving outcomes and reducing trial-and-error for patients.

Highlights:

Depression affects 22 million adults in the US annually, leading to significant societal costs
Walt and Pizzagalli focus on biomarkers and brain networks to personalize treatment
Their research aims to reduce trial-and-error in antidepressant prescriptions, improving patient care

Depression is a severely disabling psychological disorder that impacts at least 22 million adults in America per annum. The course of treatment to this type of pain has always been torturous and Aftertime a trial-and-Error-medication brought about disappointment. Two scientists of Harvard are David Walt and Diego Pizzagalli whose research aims at reducing the time a patient takes between diagnosis of a disease and quality treatment, improving their quality of life and hopes ().

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‘Did You Know?
Depression costs the US over $330 billion annually in lost productivity and medical expenses. #mentalhealth #medindia’

Burden of Depression

Depression is not a personal problem; it has wider ramifications to our society. It causes the patients to feel lonely, anxious and suffer from insomnia resulting to withdrawal from social life, and even suicidal tendencies. The costs of depression are staggering for the US, with the depression costing more than $330 billion every year in lost productivity and expenditure on medical expenses.

Existing antidepressant treatments including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) take three months before they have an impact on the patient’s condition, and only one-third of the total patients benefit from the first prescribed drug. The subsequent treatments give different results which shows that the current approach is ineffective in curing depression.

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Innovative Research Approaches

Extracellular Vesicles as Biomarkers

David Walt is concentrating at the molecular level, looking into the problem in relation to cell deformities as a possible cause of depression. His research is focused on finding out particular proteins that can potentially be biomarkers in neurons, oligodendrocytes, microglial and astrocytes. In the attempt to offer targeted treatments for depression and aided by the information about these proteins he wants to eliminate the causes of the problem.

Extracellular vesicles are tiny particles Walt’s research, which he describes as structures that can give information about the state of a cell. In order to achieve this, Walt decided to isolate these vesicles from blood samples, to determine biomarkers that can suggest whether a particular treatment works, sparing millions of patients from having to wait for years to see the effect of the therapy.

Neuroimaging Techniques and Role of Brain Networks

Diego Pizzagalli uses neuroimaging technologies such as fMRI to study depressed brains or the neural activity related to depression. His concentration is to find out the biomarkers that help to determine how patients will react to some of the SSRI antidepressants, bupropion and sertraline for instance. To achieve that, Pizzagalli plans to diagnose the connections and activity of various parts of the brain to create a less traditional treatment.

Pizzagalli’s studies focus on networks and not merely the parts of the brain as is common in other studies. He is especially focused on possible communication between nucleus accumbens and rostral anterior cingulate cortex that are important for pleasure, motivation and regulating affective states. They found this network approach could help provide information on whether to use SSRIs or some other form of medication for their patient.

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Promise of Personalized Treatment

Walt and Pizzagalli also support change in the approaches they are insisting on the idea of biological and psychological variability in patients. Through the use of new tools in neurosciences and neuroimaging, they hope to lower the level of trial and error in cases of prescription of antidepressants.

Such an approach might help to define the correct treatment strategies when necessary faster and provide better outcomes; Despite this, the suicide risk could decrease. The researchers argue that understanding the processes that underlie the development of depression, they can expand the range of treatments, and reduce the burden on patients and society.

David Walt and Diego Pizzagalli’s study has the potential to revolutionize the approach towards treating depression by employing individual techniques. While it is still in its infancy, it provides the possibility of great advancements in patient management.

Reference:

How to fight depression? Faster - (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2024/10/how-to-fight-depression-faster/)

Source-Medindia

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