We currently spend billions of euros each year on antidepressants, despite the fact that these drugs only work for 60-70% of the people who take them. Furthermore, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people with depression has increased by 18% since 2005.
Now, an innovative treatment could put a twist on this growing problem. The Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles (USA) offers an alternative therapy that works differently from drugs. This technique is transcranial magnetic stimulation and uses magnetic pulses directed to the brain of patients, as if reconnecting a computer.
This Magnetic Stimulation Treatment (TMS) has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration ( FDA) for the treatment of depression. However, scientists promise to make this revolutionary therapy available to more people.
“ We are actually changing how brain circuits are organized , how they talk to each other. The brain is an incredibly changing organ, in fact, every time people learn something new, there are physical changes in the brain structure that can be detected.” says Ian Cook, director of the study.
How does the therapy work?
The patient sits in a reclining chair and a technician places a magnetic stimulator on the patient’s head in a predetermined location, based on brain imaging calibrations. The stimulator sends a series of magnetic pulses to the brain for about 30 minutes to 1 hour. The treatment is repeated in the same way several days a week for six weeks. Although the researchers believe that it is possible to reduce the total time of the process.
“There are new TMS devices recently approved by the FDA that will allow patients to achieve the benefits of treatment in a much shorter period of time,” says Andrew Leuchter, another of the team’s researchers. “For some patients, we will have the ability to decrease the duration of a treatment session from 37.5 minutes to 3 minutes and complete a full course of TMS in two weeks.”
Experts are investigating whether this method could also be used in other neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia or epilepsy.
“We are still beginning to scratch the surface of what this treatment might be capable of doing for patients with a variety of diseases,” Leuchter says.
