Brain scan can tell whether medication or therapy is best option for depression

[FitChick]

This should be required before prescribing potentially damaging medication. I'd be curious to know the percentages for each. If it turned out that few people actually needed meds, I bet BigPharma would be rabidly against scans, calling them dangerous. Dangerous to their profit margin!

[Toddbt12y1]

This should be required before prescribing potentially damaging medication. I'd be curious to know the percentages for each. If it turned out that few people actually needed meds, I bet BigPharma would be rabidly against scans, calling them dangerous. Dangerous to their profit margin!

 

Yeah. I'd imagine BigPharm would be against it.

 

But scans(CT) are costly. 2-6k$ costly.

 

So it's not always practical. That would need be adjusted.

[AMusing]

Study details!

 

They took 82 people, divided them randomly, so that half were having cognitive behavior therapy (CBT), and the other half were giving SSRI antidepressants. There were 63 people that completed the study; of those:

12 responded to CBT (remission)

11 responded to meds (remission)

9 didn't respond to CBT

6 didn't respond to meds

 

The rest were in a grey zone between responders & nonresponders, so weren't included in the analysis.

 

Hypometabilism of the insula (part of the brain, well associated with depression) was associated with remission from CBT & no response to the meds. Hypermetabolism was (weakly) associated with reverse (response to meds, not to CBT).

 

Pretty strong correlation between outcome & the biomarker. Replication--and a prospective study that could look at the predictive power of the PET scan--need to be done before anyone gets too excited, but the science behind the first study seems good (given I only gave it a cursory glance).

[Ripnet]

When I changed my diet my depression and anxiety went away. I changed from eating processed and cooked foods to mostly fruits and vegetables.

Big Pharma doesn't what you to know that.