Prefrontal repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation as add on treatment in depression.
A growing number of studies report antidepressant effects of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in patients with major depression. The hypothesis that high frequency (20 Hz) rTMS (HF-rTMS) may speed up and strengthen the therapeutic response to sertraline in MD was tested. Twenty eight patients who had not yet received medication for the present depressive episode (n=12) or had failed a single trial of an antidepressant medication (n=16) were started on sertraline and randomised to receive either real of sham HF-rTMS. HF-rTMS was applied to the left dorsolateral prefrontal area in daily sessions (30 trains of 2 s, 20-40 s intertrain interval, at 90% motor threshold) on 10 consecutive working days. The results suggest that in this patient population, HF-rTMS does not add efficacy over the use of standard antidepressant medication.
García-Toro
M
M
Complejo Hospitalario de Mallorca, C/ Jesús n degrees 40, 07010 Palma de Mallorca, Spain. magato@intersalud.es
Pascual-Leone
A
A
Romera
M
M
González
A
A
Micó
J
J
Ibarra
O
O
Arnillas
H
H
Capllonch
I
I
Mayol
A
A
Tormos
J M
JM
D000328:Adult; D003131:Combined Modality Therapy; D003865:Major Depressive Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy*; D004599:Electric Stimulation Therapy; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D020280:Sertraline / Q000008:administration & dosage
D020280:Sertraline