Escitalopram therapy effective against major depressive disorder: Study

USA: A recent study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders explained intriguing biomarkers based on brain controllability to mechanistically comprehend and forecast the effects of escitalopram therapy for depression.

Patients with major depressive disorders (MDD) have considerably higher global average controllability than healthy controls. Patients with MDD are treated mostly with antidepressants. This study, done by Feng Fang and colleagues, intends to explore the impact of escitalopram, a type of antidepressant medicine, on the alterations of functional brain controllability all through escitalopram therapy for MDD. This is because the underlying neural control mechanism plays a crucial role in the physiopathology of depression.

At baseline (visit 1, pre-treatment), one week (visit 2, one week after the start of the therapy), and six weeks (visit 3, after the 6-week escitalopram treatment), researchers gathered resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 20 unmedicated major depressive patients.

The key findings of this study were:

1. The study's findings showed that, in comparison to healthy volunteers, MDD patients' global average and modal controllability were considerably higher and lower, respectively.

2. Additionally, depression patients' frontoparietal network's modal controllability rank was substantially lower than that of healthy participants in comparison.

3. However, the frontoparietal network and default mode network controllability of MDD patients were constantly modified to the level of healthy participants during the course of the escitalopram treatment.

4. The findings of this study also showed that, as escitalopram therapy progressed, changes in global average and modal controllability measures may be used to predict changes in the clinical ratings of MDD patients.

In conclusion, potential brain controllability-based biomarkers that may be expanded to predict and understand the effects of various therapies for different neurological and psychiatric illnesses are needed to mechanistically understand and predict the effects of escitalopram therapy for depression.

Reference: 

Fang, F., Godlewska, B., Cho, R. Y., Savitz, S. I., Selvaraj, S., & Zhang, Y. (2022). Effects of escitalopram therapy on functional brain controllability in major depressive disorder. In Journal of Affective Disorders (Vol. 310, pp. 68–74). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2022.04.123