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A comment on A new form of brain stimulation relieved severe depression in a small study.

Re:A new form of brain stimulation relieved severe depressio... by MelioRatio on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @10:51AM (#22803710)
Here is the published study including an abstract, for those interested: https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.1...

This new form of rTMS appears to have truly incredible potential to help people whose depression is otherwise resistant to treatment, which is sorely needed.

Having over 85% of participants meet remission criteria is, to put it mildly, incredible, though with only 21 participants, sample size is too small to make conclusions regarding large scale effectiveness.

As the paper notes, we now need double-blind trials. I very much hope that this treatment will be able to help people on a larger scale.

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Re:A new form of brain stimulation relieved severe depressio... by GenericThrow123 on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @11:05AM (#22803852)
These incredible numbers will almost certainly drop in larger trials and once more medication resistant participants are included in a study. ECT is comparable to the efficacy of this small scale trial, but their novel approach and increased dosage could yield a major improvement to TMS.

Also, here's the biorxiv link to the full study: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/581280v3.full.pdf

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Re:A new form of brain stimulation relieved severe depressio... by mattkrause on Tuesday April 07, 2020 @11:17AM (#22803991)
Definitely need RCTs with good blinding.

Placebo effects can play merry hell with depression, and even moreso when the patient is treated with fancy technology that has a noticeable side-effect.

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