EVALUATION OF THE EFFICACY OF DEPRESSIVE DISORDERS PHARMACOTHERAPY USING QUANTITATIVE PHARMACO-EEG

Abstract

Timely diagnosis and efficacious pharmacotherapy of depressive disorders are of immediate concern to the medical practice. The quantitative pharmaco-electroencephalography method enables differential evaluation of the affective disorder treatment efficacy. The aim of the study was to perform comparative evaluation of pharmacological activity of two treatment regimens for moderate somatization disorders in patients with gastrointestinal pathology: monotherapy with fluoxetine — an antidepressant of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors class, and combination therapy with melatonin-containing medicine. Methods: the severity of the depressive disorder and the efficacy of the treatment regimens were assessed using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS-17). The quantitative pharmaco-electroencephalography (pharmaco-EEG) was used both before and during the treatment to analyse the effect of the medicinal products on the functional state of the brain in the patients with depressive disorder. Results: it was shown that the combination of fluoxetine and melatonin results in a more rapid regression of depressive symptoms according to the HDRS-17 scale. The quantitative pharmaco-EEG method helped to reveal specific differences between the effect of fluoxetin as monotherapy and in combination with melatonin on the bioelectrical activity on the patients brain. Conclusions: the analysis of the relative power of the patient brain rhythms by pharmaco-EEG demonstrated a more rapid restoration of normal EEG rhythms in the patients who received the combination of fluoxetine and melatonin, than in those patients who received fluoxetine monotherapy which did not result in complete remission of the existing depressive episode in a number of patients after the 42-day treatment course.