HM International Blog

Approximately 18.8 million American adults suffer from depression, the leading cause of disability in the United States. Yet only about half the patients who take common medical treatments like antidepressant drugs actually see a therapeutic effect. Moreover, they suffer a broad range of undesirable side effects including weight gain, sexual dysfunction and even suicidal behavior.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has a far higher success rate, with some 80% of patients responding positively. ECT, however, is a highly invasive treatment involving general anesthesia, with many serious side effects ranging from dizziness and headaches to temporary or even permanent memory impairment.

Now an Israeli company, Brainsway, has developed a new non-invasive deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) treatment that it claims can effectively treat depression without any of the negative side effects of drugs or ECT. The treatment, which Brainsway’s founders believe could revolutionize the whole psychiatric care market, does not require anesthetic. Instead, users describe the experience as a gentle shaking or tickling of the scalp. “A bit like a massage,” Dr. Abraham Zangen, one of the inventors of the device, told ISRAEL21c.

TMS is still a relatively experimental area of medicine that is primarily being used for research purposes and clinical trials only. Though widely recognized as a potential treatment for a number of mental disorders including depression, the problem until now has been that existing TMS devices can only penetrate about half an inch beneath the surface of the cortex. This is deep enough to treat some disorders like migraine (a new TMS device to treat migraines is now being tested in the US,) but not deep enough to treat more difficult mental health conditions.

Brainsway’s founders, however, have invented a new TMS coil configuration that has been designed to generate sufficient magnetic field strength to stimulate neurons which are located 5 to 6 cm. inside the brain mass without posing a hazard. This, according to Zangen, means the device can potentially be used to treat a wide range of mental illnesses including depression, Alzheimers, Parkinson’s disease, addiction, stroke, drug abuse, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and schizophrenia.

The magnetic coil, which is placed on specific areas of the patient’s scalp, sends strong directed magnetic pulses through the brain to stimulate the Nucleus Accumbens (the part of the brain responsible for positive stimuli) and the neurons connected to it. “By repeated artificial stimulation of electrical activity created by the coil, we boost the sensitivity of these circuits so they will work more efficiently,” says Dr. Hilik Lewkovitch, at Brainsway.

The result is that the next time natural stimulation occurs, such as something pleasant that the brain responds to, the patient will respond more strongly, enjoy it more, and seek to repeat the experience. By intensifying sensitivity this causes the patient to respond normally to the environment.

What makes the device so unique in terms of treatment is that unlike ECT or drugs, it stimulates a specific area within the brain, rather than the whole brain or body. This is a well-known problem for drug therapies used to treat depression. Both ECT and drug treatments affect the entire body, even though the intention is to only stimulate certain locations deep within the brain which are thought to be the active agents for depression and other psychiatric illnesses.

Uzi Sofer, Brainsway’s CEO, believes the company’s device could become the first line of treatment for depression, a replacement not only for ECT, but also for anti-depressants themselves. “It may become the safe and effective treatment for a person’s first depressive episode,” he predicts.

Brainsway has undertaken successful animal trials at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where the device was tested as a treatment for depression, addiction, and PTSD. “These were a great success,” says Lewkovitch. From June to November last year, the company held its first clinical trials to test the safety of the treatment. Thirty-five people took part in the study that was held at the School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. “We found that not only was the device safe with no obvious side effects, but that even healthy patients who did not suffer from depression reported an improvement in positive feeling and some cognitive improvement,” says Lewkovitch. “This was very good and encouraging news.”

The company is now preparing to begin a multi-center clinical trial this month in three or four locations around the world. This will test the efficacy of the treatment, specifically related to emotional and cognitive improvements. The trial, which should take between seven to eight months, is for moderate to severely depressed patients who have not responded to medication.