Brain Glucose Metabolism During Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation

Medical University of Vienna

Status: Completed

Conditions: Depression

Treatments: Other: transcranial direct current stimulation

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02999607

3.0.30.11.16

Details and patient eligibility

About

With this study we will be able to dose-dependently measure real-time glucose metabolism changes after non-invasively stimulating superficial parts of the dlPFC, a commonly used target in therapeutic tDCS applications. This will provide further insight if and how tDCS is capable to change one of most reliable parameters of brain metabolism.

Full description

With this study, we will be able to substantiate if regional and whole brain glucose metabolism is affected by tDCS, assess the amount of signal change in relation to different currents and measure differences in glucose metabolism under stimulation reactivity between healthy subjects and depressive patients. The objective is to investigate the changes of regional cerebral metabolic rate of glucose (rCMRglu) in the brain after transcranial direct current stimulation in healthy subjects and depressive patients. The design is a cross-sectional proof of principle study in 20 healthy subjects and 20 depressed patients. During the PET scan tDCS will be applied with varying stimulus intensity. Furthermore, subjects will undergo a second PET scan with single-blind sham stimulation in order to validate the effects of tDCS. rCMRglu will be quantified using voxel-wise and ROI-based approaches. Changes in rCMRglu associated with tDCS-application will be calculated with a general linear model in a ramp function of the task-specific glucose uptake, according to previous work in our group. Exploratory statistical testing will be done using a paired samples t-test between task and rest conditions.

Enrollment: 15 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 55 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Healthy controls:

• Aged 18 to 55 years Somatic and psychiatric health based on medical history, physical examination, ECG, laboratory screening, SCID-I and II Willingness and competence to complete the informed consent process

Depressed Patients:

Current major depressive episode during unipolar major depression (MD) according to SCID-I (with HAMD>17) No other concomitant axis-I disease apart from anxiety disorder, which must be secondary to MD Standard antidepressant medication stable during the last 4 weeks

Exclusion criteria

• Concomitant major medical or neurological illness, including history of seizures Any current substance abuse disorder according to DSM-V (urinary test and history) including current sedative usage in MDD patients ECT, TMS or NMDA-antagonists (ketamine) during the past 6 months. Current augmentation with anti-epileptics, or other drugs affecting seizure threshold Failure to comply with the study protocol or follow the instructions of the investigators Pregnancy Participants with previous total radiation exposure dose of 30mSv over the last 10 years (according to legislation on radiation protection).

Left-handedness

Trial design

Primary purpose: Basic Science

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Crossover Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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15 participants in 2 patient groups

active transcranial direct current stimulation

Experimental group

Description:

Stimulation at three different intensities during FDG-PET scan

Treatment:

Other: transcranial direct current stimulation

Sham tDCS

Sham Comparator group

Description:

Comparator to active arm

Treatment:

Other: transcranial direct current stimulation