Research breakthrough in understanding treatment resistant ...( Around 5 million people in the UK exper...),Health

Around 5 million people in the UK experience depression at any one time. Whilst a number of successful treatments, both pharmacological and psychotherapeutic, are available and many people make a full recovery about 30 40% of people are resistant to conventional therapies. For them their depression is an enduring, debilitating disease and for some, the only treatment options left include psychosurgery and ECT.

Now an international team of researchers have discovered that brain activity differs significantly between healthy individuals and those suffering from treatment-resistant clinical depression.

Announcing their results in Biological Psychiatry, (October 15, 2003) the researchers were led by consultant psychiatrist, Professor Tonmoy Sharma, Director of the Clinical Neuroscience Research Centre in Dartford. He says: "This is a significant step in unravelling the reasons why these people may not be responding to the antidepressant drugs currently available."

The study, the most significant to date to have investigated dysfunction in different parts of the brain in treatment-resistant depression, also heralds a new era in drug development. There are already benchmark drugs for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, but there is no equivalent treatment for treatment-resistant depression at the moment. This development in the understanding of the biological basis of treatment-resistant depression gives hope to scientists searching for a much- needed "atypical" antidepressant.

Abnormalities in particular regions of the brain are linked to depression. However little is known about how the neural network within the brain reacts to emotional stimuli. Previous research investigating people with depression focused on the reaction to stimuli that induce a negative emotion or on the brain in a resting state. But now, for the first time, Professor Sharma's group have studied the reaction to the negative and positive mood inducing stimuli.
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Contact: Linda Berkowitz
l.berkowitz@psychmed.org.uk
44-1322-286-862
PsychMed Group
3-Oct-2003

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