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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2016 Jul:78:11-23.
doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2016.03.001. Epub 2016 Mar 15.

Establishing moderators and biosignatures of antidepressant response in clinical care (EMBARC): Rationale and design

Madhukar H Trivedi  1 , Patrick J McGrath  2 , Maurizio Fava  3 , Ramin V Parsey  4 , Benji T Kurian  5 , Mary L Phillips  6 , Maria A Oquendo  2 , Gerard Bruder  2 , Diego Pizzagalli  7 , Marisa Toups  5 , Crystal Cooper  5 , Phil Adams  2 , Sarah Weyandt  5 , David W Morris  5 , Bruce D Grannemann  5 , R Todd Ogden  8 , Randy Buckner  9 , Melvin McInnis  10 , Helena C Kraemer  11 , Eva Petkova  12 , Thomas J Carmody  5 , Myrna M Weissman  2
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Establishing moderators and biosignatures of antidepressant response in clinical care (EMBARC): Rationale and design

Madhukar H Trivedi et al. J Psychiatr Res. 2016 Jul.

Abstract

Remission rates for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) are low and unpredictable for any given antidepressant. No biological or clinical marker has demonstrated sufficient ability to match individuals to efficacious treatment. Biosignatures developed from the systematic exploration of multiple biological markers, which optimize treatment selection for individuals (moderators) and provide early indication of ultimate treatment response (mediators) are needed. The rationale and design of a multi-site, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial of sertraline examining moderators and mediators of treatment response is described. The target sample is 300 participants with early onset (≤30 years) recurrent MDD. Non-responders to an 8-week trial are switched double blind to either bupropion (for sertraline non-responders) or sertraline (for placebo non-responders) for an additional 8 weeks. Clinical moderators include anxious depression, early trauma, gender, melancholic and atypical depression, anger attacks, Axis II disorder, hypersomnia/fatigue, and chronicity of depression. Biological moderator and mediators include cerebral cortical thickness, task-based fMRI (reward and emotion conflict), resting connectivity, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), arterial spin labeling (ASL), electroencephalograpy (EEG), cortical evoked potentials, and behavioral/cognitive tasks evaluated at baseline and week 1, except DTI, assessed only at baseline. The study is designed to standardize assessment of biomarkers across multiple sites as well as institute replicable quality control methods, and to use advanced data analytic methods to integrate these markers. A Differential Depression Treatment Response Index (DTRI) will be developed. The data, including biological samples (DNA, RNA, and plasma collected before and during treatment), will become available in a public scientific repository.

Clinical trial registration: Establishing Moderators and Biosignatures of Antidepressant Response for Clinical Care for Depression (EMBARC). Identifier: NCT01407094. URL: http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT01407094.

Keywords: Antidepressant response; Biosignatures; EMBARC; Mediators; Moderators; Sertraline.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
EMBARC Study Design.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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