A widely used EEG test can predict whether certain medications will help a mentally ill, reports the journal Clinical Physiology.
EEG, or electroencephalography, is a cheap, widely available and non-invasive method of studying the electrical activity of the brain, used, among others, in the diagnosis of epilepsy or in the diagnosis of brain death. A team of scientists from Mc Master University used computer analysis of EEG test results, thanks to which it was possible to predict how patients with schizophrenia would react to treatment with a powerful drug – clozapine.
Clozapine is considered to be an effective agent for use in chronic, drug-resistant schizophrenia. However, it can cause seizures, cardiac arrhythmias and bone marrow disturbances. Sometimes there are life-threatening changes in the blood. Therefore, it is worth knowing in advance which patient clozapine will help in order not to expose them to harmful side effects.
The study was conducted on 23 patients with drug-resistant schizophrenia – 12 men and 11 middle-aged women. Thanks to the data on their EEG and response to the drug, it was possible to train the algorithm that assesses the response to clozapine with an accuracy of 89 percent – as shown by studies of another 14 people. The authors of the studies want to repeat them on a larger group of patients. They also showed that epilepsy medications can be assessed in a similar way, and that the algorithms themselves can also be used in other areas, such as the diagnosis of mental illness. (PAP)