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Predictive values of pre-treatment brain age models to rTMS effects in neurocognitive disorder with depression: Secondary analysis of a randomised sham-controlled clinical trial

Hanna Lu, Jing Li, Sandra Sau Man Chan, Suk L. Ma, Vincent Chung Tong Mok, Lin Shi, A. Mak, L. Lam

Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 2024

8 citations

Abstract

Abstract Introduction One major challenge in developing personalised repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is that the treatment responses exhibited high inter-individual variations. Brain morphometry might contribute to these variations. This study sought to determine whether individual’s brain morphometry could predict the rTMS responders and remitters. Methods This was a secondary analysis of data from a randomised clinical trial that included fifty-five patients over the age of 60 with both comorbid depression and neurocognitive disorder. Based on magnetic resonance imaging scans, estimated brain age was calculated with morphometric features using a support vector machine. Brain-predicted age difference (brain-PAD) was computed as the difference between brain age and chronological age. Results The rTMS responders and remitters had younger brain age. Every additional year of brain-PAD decreased the odds of relieving depressive symptoms by ∼25.7% in responders (Odd ratio [OR] = 0.743, p = .045) and by ∼39.5% in remitters (OR = 0.605, p = .022) in active rTMS group. Using brain-PAD score as a feature, responder-nonresponder classification accuracies of 85% (3rd week) and 84% (12th week), respectively were achieved. Conclusion In elderly patients, younger brain age appears to be associated with better treatment responses to active rTMS. Pre-treatment brain age models informed by morphometry might be used as an indicator to stratify suitable patients for rTMS…

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Evidence Hub reads this as a secondary / pooled analysis, done in people. Its evidence level is 3 of 5 (Moderate · trial / cohort / secondary analysis). Trials without a large randomized design, cohorts and secondary analyses give moderate evidence.

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