MAGNETIC BURSTS TREATING WOMEN'S DEPRESSION

MAGNETIC BURSTS TREATING WOMEN'S DEPRESSION
SACRAMENTO, Calif.-Once a week, Lucina Smith tucks earplugs into both ears, flips her auburn hair over a neck rest and waits for a powerful magnetic burst to be aimed at her.
The magnet's jolts arrive with a rattle, like a woodpecker drilling into a tree. Timed and positioned just right, they could chase away the depression that has darkened her life.
“I climb out of the well every day,” said Smith of Sacramento, Calif., a former teacher who has struggled with depressive episodes since childhood. She marks good days with small accomplishments—going grocery shopping or taking her dog for a walk. On bad days, she doesn't leave home.
She has to come to take part in a pilot study into whether a new approved treatment for depression might also help people with bipolar disorder.
“We've encountered this huge new territory, and we've just walked a few steps in,” said Dr. Gouhas Xia, a UC David professor studying repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS.
About 14 million Americans in a given year are affected by some form of depression, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.
Researchers have known for years that powerful, paced magnets can created electrical fields in the brain, speeding up or slowing down neuronal activity depending on where and how they are aimed.
The effect has been studied as a potential treatment for stroke, brain injuries, chronic pain, migraines and a wide range of psychiatric disorders.
So far, its use for depression is farthest along, with the Federal Food and Drug Administration in October approving TMS for people who haven't been helped by the first medication they are prescribed.
“The intriguing thing about it is it's noninvasive. That's the biggest appeal,” said Dr. Jamie Henderson, a Stanford, Calif., neurosurgeon who is president of the North American Neuromodulation Society.
TMS can feel like a dull tapping or thumping, not painful, but sometimes a little startling at first. Unlike medications, it doesn't cause sleepiness, weight gain or other systemic side effects. And unlike electric shocks now more commonly called electroconvulsive therapy, it doesn't cause confusion or memory loss.
For depression, a common approach has involved giving people a series of magnetic jolts every weekday for four to six weeks, with each patient's visit taking 20 to 40 minutes.
The benefit seems to last only a few weeks before follow-up sessions are needed.
Despite the FDA approval, insurers are likely to pay for TMS treatment right away, said Dr. Mark Demitrack, chief medical officer of Neuronetics.
He declined to speculate about how much it will cost.
“What we're doing now with TMS is treating electricity with electricity,” he said.
Whether for stroke or depression or pain, TMS is part of a broader trend that goes beyond regulation fo the brain primarily with medications that affect chemical changes between cells.
In psychiatric diseases when certain brain cells malfunction, “it's fundamentally an engineering problem,” Deisseroth said.