Background: Limited therapeutic options are available for patients with treatment-refractory major depression who do not respond to routinely available therapies. Vagus nerve stimulation showed adjunctive antidepressant effect in chronic treatment resistant depression, even though available studies rarely exceed 2-year follow up. We report a naturalistic 5-year follow up of five patients who received VNS implant for resistant depression (3 patients with major depressive disorder and 2 with bipolar disorder). Methods: Response was defined as a reduction of the 17-item HDRS total score ≥50% with respect to baseline, remission as a score ≤7. Results: Response and remission rates were both 40% (2/5) after 1 year, and 60% (3/5) at 5 years. Two patients withdrew from the study because of side effects or inefficacy of stimulation. Conclusions: Our case series showed that long-term VNS may be effective in reducing severity of depression in a small but significant minority of patients, although two patients had stimulation terminated because of adverse effects and/or refusal to continue the study.

Vagus nerve stimulation for treatment-resistant mood disorders: a long-term naturalistic study

ALBERT, UMBERTO;MAINA, Giuseppe;AGUGLIA, Andrea;BOGETTO, Filippo;DUCATI, Alessandro;LANOTTE, Michele Maria Rosario
Last
2015-01-01

Abstract

Background: Limited therapeutic options are available for patients with treatment-refractory major depression who do not respond to routinely available therapies. Vagus nerve stimulation showed adjunctive antidepressant effect in chronic treatment resistant depression, even though available studies rarely exceed 2-year follow up. We report a naturalistic 5-year follow up of five patients who received VNS implant for resistant depression (3 patients with major depressive disorder and 2 with bipolar disorder). Methods: Response was defined as a reduction of the 17-item HDRS total score ≥50% with respect to baseline, remission as a score ≤7. Results: Response and remission rates were both 40% (2/5) after 1 year, and 60% (3/5) at 5 years. Two patients withdrew from the study because of side effects or inefficacy of stimulation. Conclusions: Our case series showed that long-term VNS may be effective in reducing severity of depression in a small but significant minority of patients, although two patients had stimulation terminated because of adverse effects and/or refusal to continue the study.
2015
15:64
March 2015
1
9
http://www.biomedcentral.com
Treatment resistant depression; Vagus nerve stimulation; Long-term follow-up; Neuromodulation
Umberto Albert; Giuseppe Maina; Andrea Aguglia; Alberto Vitalucci; Filippo Bogetto; Chiara Fronda; Alessandro Ducati; Michele Lanotte
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/2318/158684
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