America
Shock treatment may cure depression
New York, March 31
For people suffering from
major depression who do not respond to conventional medications, shock
treatment can provide an effective alternative, confirm researchers,
including one of Indian origin.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT),
sometimes referred to as shock treatment, change certain areas of the
brain that play a role in how people feel, learn and respond to positive
and negative environmental factors, the findings, published in the
online in the journal Biological Psychiatry, showed.
"ECT has
been shown to be very effective for treating patients with major
depression who do not respond well to other treatments," said study
first author Shantanu Joshi, assistant professor of neurology at
University of California, Los Angeles.
ECT, which has been used
for more than 50 years, carries with it a certain stigma. However,
within the last decade, advances in anesthesia, electrical stimulation
equipment and new evidence about electrode lead placement have improved
safety and reduced side effects, Joshi pointed out.
Further
advances in high-resolution MRI also allow the measurement of the
induced brain changes with improved accuracy and precision, Joshi noted.
"During
the treatment course, ECT leads to plastic changes in the brain that
are linked with improvements in mood. Specifically, the hippocampus and
amygdala -- important for memory and emotion -- are shown to increase in
size," Joshi explained.
In this study, the team imaged 43
patients undergoing ECT at three time points, before beginning
treatment, after the second ECT session and within one week of
completing treatment, resulting in 129 brain scans.
They also imaged 32 healthy controls twice, and compared those images to the ECT patients.