Medtronic's 'Brain pacemaker' Shows Promise in Treating Depression And OCD

A new ray of hope for depressiondefine patients -- new studies have shown that a small device, implanted in the chest known as "brain pacemakerdefine" can potentially treat depression and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

The technique called the Deep Brain Stimulation or DBS has already shown that it can help in warding off tremors of Parkinson's disease and dystonia. DBS stimulates the neural circuits which control mood and anxiety and over 40,000 patients around the world have the implants.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is a psychotic disorder, more precisely an anxiety disorder, where a person will have persistent unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behavior (compulsions). Obsession is what people generally worry about and compulsion is the action they take to ward off the bad feelings or thoughts.

Scientists feel that psychiatric disorders are much more complex and the experiments with deep brain stimulation or DBS technique is still in its early stages of development. Just a handful of patients with severe depressiondefine, bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder so far have been treated in closely monitored studies. But still, Deep brain Stimulation (DBS) is gaining momentum as a promising therapeutic technique for a number of psychiatric disorders.

Dr. Ali Rezai, head of neurosurgery at the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Neurological Restoration, who led the studies, said the technique of deep brain stimulation (DBS) helped the most severely depressed patients improve significantly.

The team of researchers who conducted the two largest and longest studies at the Cleveland Clinic, Brown University and Belgium's University of Leuven says that 6 out of seventeen severely depressed patients were in remission a year after undergoing deep brain stimulation. Also, four more markedly improved and more than fifty percent of twenty six obsessive-compulsive (OCD) patients showed substantial improvement over 3 years.

A team of scientists from Butler Hospital/Brown Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard medical school were also involved in the depression study.

The researchers said that they did not notice any kind of adverse effects such as hemorrhagedefine or infection in the subjects. Only one patient reported discomfort from the leads, which resolved after they were relocated.

Two subjects had a relapse of depressive symptoms when their pulse generators were turned off accidentally, but symptoms improved once they were restarted, researchers said.

Dr. Ali Rezai, chief of the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Neurologic Restoration said, "We're rewiring the brain in many ways."

Helen Mayberg of Emory University, who has implanted about 50 depression patients said, "Not all patients get better, but when patients respond, it's significant." Her first patient remains in remission after 5 years. She said approximately 4 out of every six show enough improvement to be termed as "responders."

New kind of innovative therapies, are need of the hour as nearly 20 percent patients with severe depression and 10 percent of OCD patients are treatment resistent, which makes it millions of American population alone.

The brain pacemakerdefine, produced by Medtronic Inc., helps in preventing recurring feelings of depression or obsession by shocking the brain consistently.

The findings of the study, "Deep Brain Stimulation for the Treatment of Depression: Long Term Outcomes from a Prospective Multi-Center Trial" will be presented on 76th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons in Chicago.