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Three Types of Depression Identified:
According to the World Health Organization, nearly 300 million people worldwide suffer from depression and these rates are on the rise. Yet, doctors and scientists have a poor understanding of what causes this debilitating condition and for some who experience it, medicines don't help.
Scientists from the Neural Computational Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), in collaboration with their colleagues at Nara Institute of Science and Technology and clinicians at Hiroshima University, have for the first time identified three sub-types of depression. They found that one out of these sub-types seems to be untreatable by Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), the most commonly prescribed medicines for the condition. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
[...] The three distinct sub-types of depression were characterized by two main factors: functional connectivity patterns synchronized between different regions of the brain and childhood trauma experience. They found that the brain's functional connectivity in regions that involved the angular gyrus -- a brain region associated with processing language and numbers, spatial cognition, attention, and other aspects of cognition -- played a large role in determining whether SSRIs were effective in treating depression.
Patients with increased functional connectivity between the brain's different regions who had also experienced childhood trauma had a sub-type of depression that is unresponsive to treatment by SSRIs drugs, the researchers found. On the other hand, the other two subtypes -- where the participants' brains did not show increased connectivity among its different regions or where participants had not experienced childhood trauma -- tended to respond positively to treatments using SSRIs drugs.
Journal Reference:
Tomoki Tokuda, Junichiro Yoshimoto, Yu Shimizu, Go Okada, Masahiro Takamura, Yasumasa Okamoto, Shigeto Yamawaki, Kenji Doya. Identification of depression subtypes and relevant brain regions using a data-driven approach. Scientific Reports, 2018; 8 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-32521-z
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @12:48PM (2 children)
Tell me about it! SSRIs don't work with me, so I wonder if I have this one. The risk factors described seem to fit the bill. Fortunately, all hope is not lost. Cannabis seems to be effective instead.
(Score: 3, Informative) by requerdanos on Thursday November 01 2018, @04:41PM
Indeed not. Mood stablilizers such as lithium, carbemazepine and sodium divalproate, and not-exactly SSRIs like bupropion and aripiprazole can help sometimes in cases where SSRI medications don't make that magical difference that the doctors always seem to expect.
While many of these are in some ways much more dangerous than cannabis, and certainly can be more harmful due to things like liver toxicity, for some reason, they aren't frowned upon in the way that cannabis is because they have been rigorously clinically studied for depression--and reefer hasn't been.
Source: Long-time psychiatric patient
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @06:36PM
I'm in the same boat. Cannabis helps with my depression and chronic pain. I use it sparingly mostly because it is not legal in my state. I am considering moving to a cannabis friendly state so I can improve my quality of life without worrying about legal consequences.