Symptom Cluster-Matching Antidepressant Treatment: A Case Series Pilot Study

Abstract

Despite treating depression with antidepressants, their effectiveness is often insufficient. Comparative effectiveness studies and meta-analyses show the effectiveness of antidepressants; however, they do not provide clear indications as to the choice of a specific antidepressant. The rational choice of antidepressants may be based on matching their mechanisms of action to the symptomatic profiles of depression, reflecting the heterogeneity of symptoms in different patients. The authors presented a series of cases of patients diagnosed with depression in whom at least one previous antidepressant treatment was shown to be ineffective before drug targeted symptom cluster-matching treatment (SCMT). The presented pilot study shows for the first time the effectiveness of SCMT in the different clusters of depressive symptoms. All the described patients obtained recovery from depressive symptoms after introducing drug-targeted SCMT. Once validated in clinical trials, SCMT might become an effective and rational method of selecting an antidepressant according to the individual profile of depressive symptoms, the mechanism of their formation, and the mechanism of drug action. Although the study results are preliminary, SCMT can be a way to personalize treatment, increasing the likelihood of improvement even in patients who meet criteria for treatment-resistant depression.