Effect of Electroconvulsive Therapy on Retinal Nerve Fiber Layer Thickness in Depression

Mehmet Diyaddin Güleken

Status

Unknown

Conditions

Depression

Treatments

Device: Electroconvulsive therapy

Study type

Observational

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT04305132

MDGuleken

Details and patient eligibility

About

The aim of this study is to investigate the changes in the retinal nerve fiber layer thickness of the patients with depression who received electroconvulsive therapy by means of optical coherence tomography.

Full description

Major depression (MD) is a mood disorder that is common in the society, has negative effects on emotion, thought and behavior, and leads to significant impairments in functionality. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a highly effective and reliable biological treatment method used in psychiatric diseases for a long time. The most common use in psychiatry is depression. Studies have shown that ECT causes a broadly distributed increase in brain gray matter volume (especially the temporal lobe) in MD patients. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive medical imaging method that displays biological tissue layers by taking high resolution tomographic sections. Alterations in the thickness of the retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL), which is a layer of the ganglion cell complex in the retina of the eye and consists of ganglion cell axons, occur due to axonal damage in the retinal nerve tissue. Since RNFL is in a similar form with the brain gray matter tissue, recently, neurological and psychiatric studies have been conducted to provide data regarding the neurodegeneration occurring in the brain tissue. In the study, it is aimed to assess the possible cortical volume changes of patients by measuring changes in the retinal layers due to ECT in patients with depression. In other words, considering that ECT causes an increase in brain volume, it is to observe whether this increase is reflected in the retinal nerve fiber layer thickness.

Enrollment

50 estimated patients

Sex

All

Ages

18 to 65 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Subject diagnosed as unipolar depression
Subject with depression to be treated with electroconvulsive therapy
Subject with depression having a Standardized Mini Mental Test score of >23

Exclusion criteria

Any comorbid psychiatric condition (including alcohol / substance use)
Having any major neurological (i.e.: cerebrovascular disease, multiple sclerosis, etc.) disease
Having any major medical (i.e.: diabetes mellitus, myocardial infarction, etc.) disease
History of or having any ocular trauma, disease or surgery, any retinal disease, refraction defect
To be treated with electroconvulsive therapy in the last 6 months