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A. John Rush, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, and colleagues conducted a study with 1,008 individuals with MDD to assess the proportions of participants who met at least one criteria for MDD subtype—melancholic, atypical, and anxious depression—and compared subtype profiles on remission and change in depressive symptoms after eight weeks of treatment with escitalopram, sertraline, or extended-release venlafaxine. Improvement of symptoms and likelihood of remission were quantified by the 16-item Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomology-Self Report.
The researchers found that 39 percent of the studied individuals exhibited at least one pure form of a depressive subtype, with atypical subtype being the most prevalent at 15 percent. Approximately 36 percent of the participants met criteria for more than one subtype. As it relates to antidepressant treatment, the results showed that participants in all subtype groups exhibited a similar statistically significant reduction in symptoms and did not differ in the likelihood to remit.
“Whether pure or mixed, subtypes were not differentially predictive of overall acute treatment outcomes or differentially predictive of efficacy among the three antidepressant medications," the researchers concluded. "If replicated, these findings would suggest that the clinical utility of these subtypes in treatment selection is minimal.”
The iSPOT-D trial (International Study to Predict Optimized Treatment – in Depression) is the largest personalized medicine research study in mental health.
To read more about treatments for major depressive disorder, see the Manual of Clinical Psychopharmacology, Eighth Edition, by Alan Schatzberg, M.D., and Charles DeBattista, M.D., D.M.H., from American Psychiatric Publishing.
Please note: ABC News is holding a Twitter chat at #abcDRBchat to discuss “Understanding the Teenage Brain” on Tuesday, April 7, from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. EDT. APA members are invited to join the conversation with moderator Richard Besser, M.D., ABC’s chief health and medical editor, to help explain why teenage brains are different from adults brains and how that might impact health and behavior.
(Image Courtesty of UT Southwestern)