medRxiv
July 29, 2025
Artemis Zavaliangos-Petropulu, Ginny Ghang, Toni Boltz et al.
preprint
Background: Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) affects 30-50% of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and sub-anesthetic ketamine treatment can relieve TRD, yet their antidepressant mechanisms remain unclear. Peripheral blood gene expression offers a non-invasive proxy to examine potential treatment-response biomarkers. Methods: We conducted a...
Psychological Medicine
October 1, 2022
Ashish K Sahib, Joana R Loureiro, Megha M Vasavada et al.
36 citations
Subanesthetic ketamine infusion therapy can produce fast-acting antidepressant effects in patients with major depression. How single and repeated ketamine treatment modulates the whole-brain functional connectome to affect clinical outcomes remains uncharacterized. Data-driven whole brain functional connectivity (FC) analysis was used to identify the functional connections modified by ketamine...
Psychological Medicine
September 1, 2022
Benjamin Wade, Joana R Loureiro, Ashish K Sahib et al.
18 citations
Ketamine is a rapidly-acting antidepressant treatment with robust response rates. Previous studies have reported that serial ketamine therapy modulates resting state functional connectivity in several large-scale networks, though it remains unknown whether variations in brain structure, function, and connectivity impact subsequent treatment success. We used a data-driven approach to determine...
Translational Psychiatry
March 21, 2021
Jennifer L. Kruse, Megha M Vasavada, Richard Olmstead et al.
47 citations
Abstract Inflammation plays a role in depression pathophysiology and treatment response, with effects varying by sex and therapeutic modality. Lower levels of interleukin(IL)-8 predict depression response to antidepressant medication and to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), although ECT effects are specific to females. Whether IL-8 predicts depression response to ketamine and in a sex-specific...
Translational Psychiatry
July 30, 2020
Ashish K Sahib, Joana Ra Loureiro, Megha M Vasavada et al.
37 citations
Subanesthetic ketamine is found to induce fast-acting and pronounced antidepressant effects, even in treatment resistant depression (TRD). However, it remains unclear how ketamine modulates neural function at the brain systems-level to regulate emotion and behavior. Here, we examined treatment-related changes in the inhibitory control network after single and repeated ketamine therapy in TRD....
Human Brain Mapping
May 1, 2020
Joana R Loureiro, Amber M Leaver, Megha M Vasavada et al.
65 citations
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and ketamine treatment both induce rapidly acting antidepressant effects in patients with major depressive disorder unresponsive to standard treatments, yet their specific impact on emotion processing is unknown. Here, we examined the neural underpinnings of emotion processing within and across patients (N = 44) receiving either ECT (N = 17, mean age: 36.8, 11.0...