There’s a reason why antidepressants don’t work for everyone

Scientists have identified blood markers that may help understand why antidepressant drugs do not successfully alleviate depression in everyone.

Researchers from University Medical Center Mainz and the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Germany developed a mouse model that allowed them to identify blood signatures associated with response to antidepressant treatment and could show the importance of the stress-related glucocorticoid receptor in recovery from depression.

Major depression is the leading cause of disability according to the World Health Organization, affecting an estimated 350 million people worldwide, but only one-third of patients benefit from the first antidepressant prescribed. (Shutterstock)

Major depression is the leading cause of disability according to the World Health Organization, affecting an estimated 350 million people worldwide, but only one-third of patients benefit from the first antidepressant prescribed.

Although the currently available treatments are safe, there is significant variability in the outcome of antidepressant treatment. So far there are no clinical assessments that can predict with a high degree of certainty whether a particular patient will respond to a particular antidepressant.

Finding the most effective antidepressant medication for each patient depends on trial and error, underlining the urgent need to establish conceptually novel strategies for the identification of biomarkers associated with a positive response.

To tackle this challenge, scientists established a novel experimental approach in animals focusing on extreme phenotypes in response to antidepressant treatment. This model simulated the clinical situation, by identifying good and poor responders to antidepressant treatment.

This suggests that molecular signatures associated with antidepressant response in the mouse could in fact predict the outcome of antidepressant treatment in the patient cohort.

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