WINSTON CHURCHILL referred to clinical depression as “the black dog”. Approximately 30% of those diagnosed with the condition fail to respond sufficiently to medication or psychological counselling. But new help may be at hand.
Danish scientists are confident that a new helmet which transmits electromagnetic pulses to the brain of the depressed will help to ease the melancholy that overwhelms sufferers. Trials conducted with the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Copenhagen University, and the research unit at the Psychiatric Centre at Hillerød in North Zealand have proved promising.
In the latest trial, the results of which were published on April 15th in Acta Neuropsychiatrica, 65 patients burdened by seemingly untreatable depression were given the helmets to use for a period of eight weeks (they also continued taking their regular anti-depressant medication). 34 participants received a half hour dose of Transcranial Pulsating Electromagnetic Fields (T-PEMF) once a day and 31 had two half hour doses. All participants used the helmet in their own homes.
The device contains seven coils that deliver T-PEMF to brain tissues. The helmet’s principal architect, Professor Steen Dissing from Copenhagen’s Faculty of Health Sciences, reveals that the device “mimics electrical fields in the brain which trigger the body’s own healing mechanism.” The pulses activate cerebral capillaries that form new blood vessels as they imitate the brain’s own electrical signalling.
At the end of the trial, the 34 people who received one dose a day showed a 73% improvement in their wellbeing; the 31 others who had two improved by 67%. The results surprised researchers who concluded that the biochemical process should not be forced. "You cannot keep pulsing," says Professor Dissing. “The release of growth hormones, and their synthesis in the capillaries, can only occur so fast. That's rate limiting,” he explains. Nevertheless, some participants felt the positive effects after just a week.
The pulses are so minute that the patient cannot detect any sensation, and the only side effect so far is occasional nausea that immediately disappears after treatment. The helmet also had the additional benefit of increasing patients’ tolerance for anti-depression medications.
T-PEMF could ultimately replace controversial electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for some sufferers, a treatment graphically recalled in the writings of Sylvia Plath. It has been used for severe forms of depression since the 1940s.
Professor Dissing and his team are currently seeking permission from the European Union to market the helmet within a year. The potential demand is enormous: more than 350m people suffer from depression and the numbers are rising, especially among those over 65-years-old.
The device may yet have other uses too. In May, scientists from Odense University also in Denmark will study 120 patients to discover whether T-PEMF can slow the physical degeneration (particularly stiffness and tremors) caused by Parkinson’s disease.
But for now some participants in the trial are already grateful for the helmet’s effects on their mood. Annemette Øvlisen, a graphic artist who suffered recurrent depression for 16 years, was amazed. “It’s like the fog lifts. It was as though somebody hit the reset button,” she says.
