Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 May 3;16(5):e59612.
doi: 10.7759/cureus.59612. eCollection 2024 May.

Technical Report: Efficacy and Safety of Low-Intensity Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in the Remission of Depressive Symptoms in Patients With Treatment-Resistant Depression in Mexico

Cristina Rodríguez Hernández  1 , Omar Medrano Espinosa  1 , Raúl Sampieri-Cabrera  2 , Alan R Oviedo Lara  3
Affiliations

Technical Report: Efficacy and Safety of Low-Intensity Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in the Remission of Depressive Symptoms in Patients With Treatment-Resistant Depression in Mexico

Cristina Rodríguez Hernández et al. Cureus. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive neuromodulation technique that induces action potentials in the stimulated cortical area and has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). The prevalence of MDD in Mexico almost tripled after the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, we evaluated the safety and therapeutic effects of low-intensity TMS (Li-TMS) - characterized by inducing electric currents below the action potential threshold on the cerebral cortex - in 41 subjects diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression (TRD). A Li-TMS device dispensed repetitive magnetic pulses at 30 mT for 60 minutes during 20 sessions (once daily from Monday to Saturday) with the theta burst pattern. Our results suggest that Li-TMS is a safe therapy with antidepressant effects, demonstrated by the decrease in Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) scores and lessening of depressive symptoms.

Keywords: low intensity tms; major depression disorder; noninvasive neuromodulation; transcranial magnetic stimulation (tms); treatment-resistant depression (trd).

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Correlation and distribution of BDI scores at different times of assessment throughout the Li-TMS treatment in patients with TRD.
The box plot depicts how the medians and interquartile ranges (IQRs) of the BDI scores decrease in each successive assessment. T1 (BDI assessment before session 1) reflects the highest IQR values in comparison with T2 (BDI assessment at the end of session 10) and T3 (BDI assessment at the end of session 20), which show lower IQR values, with T3 the lowest, suggesting that the Li-TMS treatment applied to TRD patients tends to decrease depressive symptoms over time.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Morrison J. Mexico: Editorial El Manual Moderno; 2015. DSM-5: guide to clinical diagnosis [Article in Spanish]
    1. Esmethadone-HCl (REL-1017): a promising rapid antidepressant. Fava M, Stahl SM, De Martin S, et al. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci. 2023;273:1463–1476. - PMC - PubMed
    1. American Psychiatric Association. ed. --.). Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana. Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; 2014. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders DSM-5 (5th ed)
    1. Organización Mundial de la Salud. International Classification of Diseases Eleventh Revision (ICD-11) [Article in Spanish] Ginebra: Organización Mundial de la Salud; 2022.
    1. Kay J, Tasman A. Chichester: Wiley; 2006. Essentials of psychiatry.

LinkOut - more resources