Home-based transcranial direct current stimulation for major depressive disorder: 6-month follow-up from randomised sham-controlled trial and open-label treatment phases
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a potential home-based treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD). In our double-blind randomised controlled trial (RCT) (n = 174; UK and USA), a 10-week course of home-based tDCS demonstrated clinical efficacy (clinical response: 58.3 % active treatment arm and 37.8 % sham ( p = 0.017). tDCS was delivered in a bifrontal montage, with anode over left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and cathode over right DLPFC. Each session was 30 min, with active stimulation at 2 mA and sham at 0 mA, incorporating brief ramp-up and ramp-down phased. Following the 10-week RCT, all participants were offered active tDCS in a 10-week open-label treatment phase, with 111 participants completing this phase. UK cohort (n = 77 MDD) were invited for additional 3-month and 6-month follow-ups, extending the total study period to 11 months post-randomisation. Participants were able to continue using the tDCS device during follow-up. At least one follow-up visit was attended by 42 MDD participants (27 women). Device usage rates were 59 % at 3-month follow-up and 55 % at 6-month follow-up. Clinical response rate was 64 % at 3-month follow-up and 76 % at 6-month follow-up. Among participants who had shown a clinical response after the open-label phase, 90 % maintained their response at the 6-month follow-up. In summary, long-term follow-up showed high and sustained clinical response rates regardless of continued tDCS device use. • Clinical outcomes were maintained at 3- and 6-month follow-up. • Over half of participants continued with tDCS sessions during follow-up. • Continued tDCS use or no continued use did not significantly affect outcomes. • The treatment was safe and side effects were mild. • Home-based tDCS remained acceptable over the long term follow-up period.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.009 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".