Transcriptional profiling of antidepressant ketamine and electroconvulsive therapy treatment
medRxiv July 29, 2025 Artemis Zavaliangos‐petropulu, Ginny Ghang, Toni Boltz et al. preprint
Treatment-resistant depression affects 30-50% of people with major depressive disorder. Electroconvulsive therapy and ketamine can relieve it, but how they work is unclear. This transcriptome analysis of peripheral blood from 37 people receiving electroconvulsive therapy, 60 receiving ketamine, and 35 non-depressed controls found no longitudinal changes in gene expression for either treatment after correcting for multiple comparisons. In the ketamine group, one gene (IGKV1-9) differed between remitters and non-remitters at baseline. In the electroconvulsive therapy group, six co-regulated gene modules differed at baseline between patients and controls. Pre-treatment gene expression differences may have predictive value, but larger studies are needed.