This week, two Israeli neuroscientists have rolled out a blood test in the US and Israel that they say can measure the responsiveness of a patient with major depressive disorder to common antidepressants.

Depression is one of the most common forms of mental disorder, affecting more than 330 million people worldwide. Treatment methods rely primarily on a taxing trial-and-error process to find the right prescription drug, which can take years.

In Israel, the psychological toll of 23 months of war and counting has made the need for effective mental health treatment felt more than ever.

The blood test, created by Dr. Talia Cohen Solal and Dr. Daphna Laifenfeld of Israeli health tech startup NeuroKaire, promises to create a platform for personalized treatment of mental disorders. Guided by the test results, clinicians and psychiatrists can determine which treatment is most suited to a particular patient’s condition.

“For far too long, patients with clinical depression have endured a grueling trial-and-error process before finding an effective treatment,” Cohen Solal told The Times of Israel. “Around one-third of the time, a patient improves or recovers from depression when seeking treatment, and around two-thirds of the time, physicians will need to change their medication or dosage multiple times.”

“Typically, the guessing game of identifying the right drug for a patient with clinical depression can take between 12 to 18 months. We are bringing that down to two months,” she claimed.

The blood test began being offered in Israel and the US this week, though the new technology still needs more research and trial data to determine its effectiveness, according to Prof. Mark Weiser, who heads the Psychiatry Department at Sheba Medical Center, which was involved in testing the process.

“NeuroKaire’s unique combination of stem-cell technology, genomics, and AI represents an evolutionary step forward from traditional pharmacogenetics and is promising, but it is still early days, and more research needs to be done in large clinical trials with hundreds of patients, comparing the outcomes with those that haven’t taken the test, and further improve results for patients,” Weiser........

© The Times of Israel