Psychiatry Tests Magnetic Therapy
 as Treatment for Severe Depression

A new treatment that delivers brief but intense magnetic pulses to the brain may be as effective as traditional electroconvulsive therapy in treating severe depression, according to a study by UIC psychiatrists.

That's good news, said Philip Janicak, medical director of the Psychiatric Clinical Research Center and head of the clinical trial, because the treatment—repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or rTMS—appears to produce fewer harmful side effects than electroconvulsive therapy, better known as shock treatment.

In rTMS, a physician uses a hand-held wire coil to produce a controlled, rapidly fluctuating magnetic field with a strength of 1.5 to 2.0 Tesla, about the same strength used in magnetic resonance imaging but more focused. The coil is placed over the left prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain behind the forehead that in depressed patients typically shows abnormal electrical activity and decreased blood flow. The magnetic pulses pass through the skull into this targeted area. The procedure lasts about ten to fifteen, during which about one thousand stimulations occur.

Compared with electroconvulsive therapy, which works by inducing a seizure, rTMS is relatively benign, Janicak said. Sedation is not required, and patients do not appear to experience deterioration in memory or cognition, standard side effects of shock treatment. However, there is a very small risk of an inadvertent seizure.

The preliminary results of the UIC trial were published in the April 15, 2002, issue of Biological Psychiatry. The trial was supported in part by UIC's General Clinical Research Center with funding from the National Institutes of Health.