2008 Woodie Awards
Nerve stimulators help with depression
Issue date: 5/1/08
A year after the initial treatment, there was a decrease of depressive symptoms in 41 percent of patients.
Nevertheless, VNS treatments do have adverse side effects, with the most common ones being voice alteration in 63 percent of patients, cough, pain and shortness of breath. These side effects were mostly restricted to the time of active stimulation.
In both the study conducted in the U.S. and in Europe, researchers found significant evidence to conclude that VNS reduces the severity of treatment-resistant depression.
The efficacy of this treatment was larger in the European sample because the treatment response rate increased to 53 percent after one year of VNS therapy.
However, this high efficacy could be attributed to the lower measures of baseline depression, that is, a lower standard for measuring how depressed the patients were.
It is also unlikely that the patients' response to VNS therapy is due to placebo effect because the patients studied were highly depressed and are less likely to show placebo response.
In addition, the study demonstrated a high proportion of sustained antidepressant response over time, which opposes the less stable improvements associated with placebo effect in antidepressant studies.
Nevertheless, VNS treatments do have adverse side effects, with the most common ones being voice alteration in 63 percent of patients, cough, pain and shortness of breath. These side effects were mostly restricted to the time of active stimulation.
In both the study conducted in the U.S. and in Europe, researchers found significant evidence to conclude that VNS reduces the severity of treatment-resistant depression.
The efficacy of this treatment was larger in the European sample because the treatment response rate increased to 53 percent after one year of VNS therapy.
However, this high efficacy could be attributed to the lower measures of baseline depression, that is, a lower standard for measuring how depressed the patients were.
It is also unlikely that the patients' response to VNS therapy is due to placebo effect because the patients studied were highly depressed and are less likely to show placebo response.
In addition, the study demonstrated a high proportion of sustained antidepressant response over time, which opposes the less stable improvements associated with placebo effect in antidepressant studies.
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