Naked Medicine

By Zack Lynch

From this month’s Neurotech Insights investment newsletter focused on the depression market:

While drugs to treat depression have proven effective for millions of individuals there exist a significant number of patients who do not respond to antidepressants. Treatment resistant depression, or refractory depression, is a condition that affects an estimated 4 million people in the U.S. and 11 million worldwide. Until recently, there were no options for these individuals beyond treatment with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which commonly induces memory loss among other issues. Today, several neurodevice approaches for the treatment of refractory depression are emerging including Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS), Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) and repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS).

The first neurodevice to be approved by the FDA for depression was Cyberonics’ VNS Therapy system. On July 15, 2005, the FDA approved Cyberonics’ VNS Therapy as a long-term adjunctive treatment for patients 18 years of age or older with chronic or recurrent treatment-resistant depression in a major depressive episode that have not responded to at least four adequate antidepressant treatments. Chronic treatment-resistant depression is defined as being in the current depressive episode for more than two years. Recurrent treatment-resistant depression is defined as having a history of multiple prior episodes of depression. The approved indication for use includes patients with unipolar or bipolar depression in a major depressive episode. Read the rest of this entry »