Functional as well as structural brain connectivity and epigenetic changes in major depressive disorder associated with remission and persistence of symptoms over a 5 year course

Still less than one third of patients with MDD achieve remission with an adequate trial of a standard antidepressant after 10 - 14 weeks of treatment. This project will provide a crucial part of the research required for the development of more effective therapy strategies and for understanding the backgrounds for achieving remission from depression. Since approximately 500,000 people in Ireland have or will get MDD in their life, advances in this area aim to significantly reduce the cost of treating the disease. In this project we will clinically as well as with the use of novel neuroimaging techniques and established epigenetics follow-up participants of our previous depression study after 5 years in order to understand the clinical course and in particular neuroplastic structural, functional and diffusion changes in the brain associated with clinical outcome.

Award Date

19 June 2014

Award Value

€329,670

Principal Investigator

Professor Thomas Frodl

Host Institution

Trinity College Dublin

Scheme

Health Research Awards