Artículos de revistas
A randomized, double-blind clinical trial on the efficacy of cortical direct current stimulation for the treatment of major depression
Fecha
2008Registro en:
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NEUROPSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY, v.11, n.2, p.249-254, 2008
1461-1457
10.1017/S1461145707007833
Autor
BOGGIO, Paulo S.
RIGONATTI, Sergio P.
RIBEIRO, Rafael B.
MYCZKOWSKI, Martin L.
NITSCHE, Michael A.
PASCUAL-LEONE, Alvaro
FREGNI, Felipe
Institución
Resumen
Preliminary findings suggest that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can have antidepressant effects. We sought to test this further in a parallel-group, double-blind clinical trial with 40 patients with major depression, medication-free randomized into three groups of treatment: anodal tDCS of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (active group-`DLPFC`); anodal tDCS of the occipital cortex (active control group-`occipital`) and sham tDCS (placebo control group-`sham`). tDCS was applied for 10 sessions during a 2-wk period. Mood was evaluated by a blinded rater using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The treatment was well tolerated with minimal side-effects that were distributed equally across all treatment groups. We found significantly larger reductions in depression scores after DLPFC tDCS [HDRS reduction of 40.4 % (+/-25.8%)] compared to occipital [HDRS reduction of 21.3 % ( +/-12.9%)] and sham tDCS [HDRS reduction of 10.4 % (+/-36.6%)]. The beneficial effects of tDCS in the DLPFC group persisted for 1 month after the end of treatment. Our findings support further investigation on the effects of this novel potential therapeutic approach - tDCS - for the treatment of major depression.