Friday, September 21, 2007

Personalised treatment for depression

The 31 million antidepressant prescriptions written annually in the UK could see a marked drop saving the NHS millions, thanks to groundbreaking research recently published by the University of Cambridge’s Brain Mapping Unit.



The study, reported this week in the journal Biological Psychiatry, has found that it may be possible to predict whether patients will respond positively to antidepressant treatment, creating the possibility of tailor-made treatment solutions to the increasingly common condition.

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a team from the University’s Brain Mapping Unit, led by Prof Ed Bullmore, found that it was possible to forecast the benefits a patient might see from undertaking different types of treatment for depression.

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