Original ArticleInvestigating the relationship between cognitive change and antidepressant response following rTMS: A large scale retrospective study
Section snippets
Method
The study involved the pooled analysis of data from four clinical trials (Fitzgerald et al., unpublished data).14, 15, 16 Where relevant, only data from participants randomized to active treatment was included. As stated, the aim of the current study was to assess relationships between cognitive change and antidepressant response after rTMS treatment and not the impact of rTMS on cognition per se. Therefore, the pooling of the data allows investigation of these relationships irrespective of the
Results
There were no significant differences on demographic or clinical variables across the four studies (Table 1).
Discussion
There was no cognitive deterioration after a treatment course of rTMS across the four depression trials, with tests of working memory and verbal fluency showing significant improvements after controlling for multiple comparisons. These improvements were not significantly related to reductions in depression severity. With respect to the analyses of early cognitive change, improvement in performance on immediate visuospatial memory was significantly related to eventual reduction of depression
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K.E.H. was supported by Post Doctoral Training Fellowships from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). P.B.F. was supported by a Practitioner Fellowship grant from NHMRC. Z.J.D. was supported by a NARSAD Independent Investigator Award.
P.B.F. and Z.J.D. have received support for participation in a research study from Neuronetics Ltd. and have no relevant conflicts of interest. K.E.H. and R.A.S. have nothing to disclose.