Parsing the antidepressant effects of non-invasive brain stimulation and pharmacotherapy:
Goerigk et al, 2021. Brain Stimulation.
Randomized clinical study with antidepressant-free, clinically depressed patients to receive 22 bifrontal tDCS (2 mA, 30 min) sessions, escitalopram 20 mg/day, or placebo over 10 weeks.
Agglomerative hierarchical clustering identified “sleep/insomnia”, “core depressive”, “guilt/anxiety”, and “atypical” clusters that were the dependent measure.
Active treatments were both superior to placebo in core depressive but not atypical symptoms.
Escitalopram but not tDCS was superior to placebo in improving guilt/anxiety symptoms.
TDCS but not escitalopram was superior to placebo in improving sleep/insomnia symptoms.