Finding the right antidepressants is difficult. They do not work immediately, and often you have to wait several weeks to eventually find that the medicine does not help. Psychologist Anna Cattaneo found a way to determine the right treatment at the very beginning.
In severe depression, there is often a real risk of suicide. Therefore, it is so important to find the right way of treatment, taking into account the individual characteristics of each patient, and not “at random”.
In recent years, doctors and scientists have come to the conclusion that many mental disorders, especially — depression associated with chronic inflammationin the body. Inflammation after an injury or illness is completely normal, it only indicates that our immune system is fighting pathogens and repairing damage. Such inflammation is present only in the affected area of the body and passes with time.
However, systemic chronic inflammatory processes affect the entire body over a long period of time. The development of inflammation is promoted by: chronic stress, difficult living conditions, obesity and malnutrition. The relationship between inflammation and depression is two-way — they mutually support and reinforce each other.
With the help of such an analysis, doctors will be able to determine in advance that standard drugs will not help the patient.
Inflammatory processes contribute to the development of the so-called oxidative stress, which occurs due to excess free radicals that kill brain cells and break the connection between them, which eventually leads to the development of depression.
Psychologists from the UK, led by Anna Cattaneo, decided to test whether it is possible to predict the effectiveness of antidepressants using a simple blood test that allows you to determine inflammatory processes.1. They looked at data from 2010 that compared genetic factors (and more) that affect how antidepressants work.
It turned out that for patients who the activity of inflammatory processes exceeded a certain threshold, conventional antidepressants did not work. In the future, using such an analysis, doctors will be able to determine in advance that standard drugs will not help the patient and that stronger drugs or a combination of several, including anti-inflammatory drugs, should be prescribed immediately.
1 A. Cattaneo et al. «Absolute Measurements of Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor and Interleukin-1-β mRNA Levels Accurately Predict Treatment Response in Depressed Patients», International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, May 2016.