Mayo Clinic Proceedings Reviews Deep Brain Stimulation to Treat Psychiatric Diseases

Mayo Clinic Proceedings Reviews Deep Brain Stimulation to Treat Psychiatric
Diseases

ROCHESTER, Minn., June 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Pioneering therapeutic
trials to investigate the effectiveness of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in
hard-to-treat depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette's
syndrome are underway at multiple medical centers around the world, according
to a review in the June 2009 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. "Deep brain
stimulation has long been seen as valuable for controlling movement
disorders," according to the review, written by Susannah Tye, Ph.D., Mark
Frye, M.D., from the Mayo Clinic Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, and
Kendall Lee, M.D., Ph.D., Mayo Clinic Department of Neurosurgery. "It now is
being investigated for hard-to-treat psychiatric disorders," according to the
authors.

"Early results indicate the effect on depression and obsessive compulsive
disorder is beneficial, but the therapy needs further study," Dr. Lee says.
The potential for this breakthrough treatment is enormous in reducing the toll
of mental illness on patients, their families and society, according to the
review.

Unlike electroshock therapy (ECT), which stimulates the entire brain, DBS
stimulates specific parts of the brain. DBS is thought to be functionally
equivalent to creating a lesion on the brain, but with the advantage of being
adjustable and reversible.

"It is like implanting a pacemaker for the brain," says Dr. Lee. The patient
is awake during deep brain stimulation surgery while a neurosurgeon implants
the electrodes. Patients are able to give immediate feedback. Additionally,
patients do not feel any pain during the implantation procedure since the
brain is without pain receptors.

In the developed world, major depression is second only to cardiovascular
disease in premature mortality and time lived with disability according to the
review. In persons aged 15 to 44 years, depression is the most disabling
medical illness in the United States. The prevalence of major depression,
known to be a chronic and relapsing illness, is approximately 17 percent,
affecting almost 1 in 5 persons.

Medications and psychiatric therapy can effectively treat many patients with
major depression; however, up to 20 percent of these patients fail to respond
to these non-surgical therapeutic interventions.

"DBS is not a miracle cure and should not be used to treat all depression,"
says Dr. Lee. "It should be reserved for those patients who have
treatment-resistant depression and approved by a multi-disciplinary team."
Ongoing advances in DBS technologies represent an important new field that
could greatly advance the understanding of psychiatric neurobiology, according
to the review.

A peer-review journal, Mayo Clinic Proceedings publishes original articles and
reviews dealing with clinical and laboratory medicine, clinical research,
basic science research and clinical epidemiology. Mayo Clinic Proceedings is
published monthly by Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research as
part of its commitment to the medical education of physicians. The journal has
been published for more than 80 years and has a circulation of 130,000
nationally and internationally. Articles are available online at
www.mayoclinicproceedings.com.

VIDEO ALERT: Additional audio and video resources, including excerpts from an
interview with Dr. Kendall Lee describing the research, are available on the
Mayo Clinic News Blog.

About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit group practice
in the world. Doctors from every medical specialty work together to care for
patients, joined by common systems and a philosophy that "the needs of the
patient come first." More than 3,300 physicians, scientists and researchers
and 46,000 allied health staff work at Mayo Clinic, which has sites in
Rochester, Minn., Jacksonville, Fla., and Scottsdale/Phoenix, Ariz.
Collectively, the three locations treat more than half a million people each
year. To obtain the latest news releases from Mayo Clinic, go to
www.mayoclinic.org/news. MayoClinic.com (www.mayoclinic.com) is available as a
resource for your health stories. For more on Mayo Clinic research, go to
www.mayo.edu.

SOURCE Mayo Clinic

John Murphy, +1-507-284-5005 (days), +1-507-284-2511 (evenings),
newsbureau@mayo.edu