How a simple blood test could improve life for more than half of depression patients.
If you've tried antidepressants to treat your depression, you probably already know this, but finding the right one can be a trial.
There are many different antidepressants out there today, and each works differently. Photo from Joe Raedle/Getty Images.
About 1 in 5 Americans will experience major depression during their lifetime. Antidepressant medication, either alone or in combination with things like cognitive behavior therapy or exercise, can be a powerful tool to help people live with depression — if it works.
Unfortunately, the go-to antidepressants don't work for more than half of the people who try them.
And about a third of all patients never find their perfect fit. This lack of response to the medication isn't anyone's fault — our bodies just work differently. But if you're looking to get help and worry about finding the right medication, a pretty amazing new tool could help.
If you've gone through this, you know the trial and error process can be physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing. It can mean weeks or months of wondering what each new thought means: whether those couple of sleepless nights are a new side effect or just run-of-the-mill insomnia; whether the medication is having any effect at all.
Is this a side effect or just restlessness? At 3 a.m., the line can be hard to see. Image from iStock.
Wouldn't it be awesome if we could skip some of that trial and error?
That's what a group of researchers in England is working on. Their research was just published in The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.
Their idea is a premedication blood test that would help find the right medication faster.
Image from iStock.
Over the past few years, scientists have been figuring out more and more about how depression affects our bodies. This new blood test measures the level of two biomarkers — or chemical signals — that have previously been linked to poor medication responses.
What they found is that different people had different levels of these biomarkers. If you were above a certain threshold, you had a 99% chance that the go-to meds wouldn't work for you. With this test, these people could save the time they would have spent in the past trying meds that would never work for them to begin with.
This new test could help more than half of the people who suffer from depression jump weeks — or even months — ahead in their treatment.
Image from iStock.
It's not a crystal ball — patients and psychiatrists would still need to work together to figure out the specifics — but instead a frustrating period of trial and error, some patients could skip straight to different medications, combinations, or non-medication-based treatments altogether.
This might sound like a simple thing, but if you've gone through those weeks of trial and error yourself, you know how much a relief this would be.
Brian Dow of the nonprofit Rethink Mental Illness was reported by The Independent as saying, "We hope this new research creates a much needed shortcut to a future where it's no longer luck of the draw when it comes to vital medication."
The next step is to take this from proof-of-concept to clinical trial.
Now that the science seems to back up the idea, the next step for scientists is to actually try it out in a clinical setting and see if it truly does work better than current methods.
In the future, treating depression could become easier and faster, helping people avoid the hassle of trial and error and letting them focus on the most important thing: getting healthy.
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.