Brain scan can predict response to antidepressant

By Geoff Michaels, June 8th, 2013 | Health | 0 Comments

Patients with specific patterns of brain activity had a tendency to respond well to paroxetine for depression and obsessive compulsive disorder.
Paroxetine is an antidepressant which has also been used in the successful treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). But some patients fail to respond. If they could be identified prior to treatment, alternative options could be explored.

In the first study of its kind, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, screened a group of patients using positron emission tomography (PET), which gives an image of brain activity. Twenty seven of the patients had OCD, 27 had major depression and another 17 had both conditions. They had PET scans both before and after treatment with paroxetine.

Improved OCD symptoms were linked with higher pre-treatment activity in specific parts of the brain. The same was true for improvement of depression (although the regions of the brain involved differed). The study opens up the possibility of using brain imaging to pick out those patients most likely to benefit from a specific treatment. In other words, PET can help the psychiatrist tailor treatment to an individual patient.