Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi

New Delhi, Aug 31: A combination of brain and gastric electrical signals along with clinical symptoms could help predict antidepressant treatment outcomes within seven to 10 days of starting therapy, according to a study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) and Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi Memorial (GSVM) Medical College.

The findings could enable doctors to assess treatment response much earlier than the conventional four to six weeks typically required to determine whether an antidepressant is working, an IIT Kanpur statement said on Monday.

The ability to identify likely treatment responses at an early stage could help address a major challenge in depression care. Depression affects an estimated five per cent of adults worldwide and around 4.5 per cent of India’s population. More than half of patients may not respond adequately to their first antidepressant, often resulting in weeks of trial and error before an effective treatment is identified.

“Our study showed that objective non-invasive brain and gut electrophysiological signals collected in about the first week of treatment already contain valuable information about treatment response to precisely guide the intervention,” said Dr Pragathi Priyadharsini Balasubramani, Assistant Professor, Department of Cognitive Science, IIT Kanpur, and corresponding author of the study.

“We found that different symptom profiles were associated with distinct patterns of brain and gut physiology linked to treatment outcomes,” said Amal Jude Ashwin Francis, PhD Scholar, Department of Cognitive Science, IIT Kanpur, and first author of the study.

Francis said recognising these biological subtypes could help explain why patients respond differently to the same medication and facilitate more personalised treatment strategies.

The researchers examined electrical activity in the brain and stomach using electroencephalography (EEG) and electrogastrography (EGG), respectively, along with clinical symptom data.

The study involved 206 participants, including 144 treatment-naive patients with depression. EEG and EGG signals were recorded at the beginning of treatment and again approximately one week later.

Researchers then assessed whether these early biological signals, combined with clinical information, could predict treatment outcomes evaluated four to six weeks after antidepressant therapy began.

During model evaluation, the predictive model identified patients unlikely to respond to treatment with 84 per cent sensitivity and 78 per cent specificity, the statement said.

When tested on an independent patient cohort, the model achieved an overall accuracy of 77.3 per cent, with 80 per cent specificity and 71.4 per cent sensitivity in identifying nonresponders.