Scientists have developed a blood test that can predict whether people with depression will respond or not to common antidepressants, a finding that could initiate a new era of personalized treatments.
The researchers said, guided by this exam in the future doctors will be able to refer depressed patients for early treatment with better use of antidepressants, possibly including two medications before they get worse.
“this study gets us one step closer to providing a treatment personalized depression at the first signs of depression, “said Annamaria Cattaneo, who led the work of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London (IoPPN, its acronym in English).
depression is one of the most common forms of mental illness and affects over 350 million people worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) with the listed leading cause of disability in the world.
The treatment usually involves medication or some form of psychotherapy or a combination of both. But about half of all people treated for depression does not improve with initial use of antidepressants, and approximately one third of patients have resistance to all drugs designed to help them.
So far, doctors do not They were able to establish whether someone will respond well or not an antidepressant, or if the patient may need a more aggressive treatment plan from the beginning.
As a result, patients often are treated at the base trial and error, trying one drug after another for months and often without witnessing an improvement in their symptoms.
in the study, published on Tuesday (7) in the scientific journal “International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, “the Cattaneo team focused on two biomarkers that measure blood inflammation.
previous studies have linked high levels of inflammation to a bad reaction to antidepressants. Researchers measured two markers, called Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor (MIF) and interleukin (IL) -1β, two groups of depressed patients before or after they take a variety of common antidepressants.
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