TMS-EEG to measure brain responses to antipsychotic drugs in humans
Research type
Research Study
Full title
TMS-EEG to measure brain responses to antipsychotic drugs in humans
IRAS ID
250250
Contact name
Sukhi Shergill
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, No register exists
Duration of Study in the UK
24 years, 0 months, 3 days
Research summary
Around one third of people with psychosis do not respond to antipsychotic treatment. One possible reason for a lack of response is that the drug is not exerting a sufficient pharmacological effect in the brain. It has been shown recently that the combination of transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) can directly measure the activity of drugs in the brain of healthy volunteers. Pharmacological studies showed that drugs that act on the central nervous system modified TMS-evoked EEG potentials at specific latencies (e.g. N45, N100 and P180). The present study aims to assess whether TMS-EEG fingerprints of antipsychotic activity obtained in healthy participants can be candidate biomarkers for predicting antipsychotic treatment outcome in patients.\n\nTo address this research question, the TMS-EEG fingerprints of the pharmacological activity of 3 widely prescribed antipsychotics will be compared to the TMS-EEG response of schizophrenia patients who are on monotherapy with one of the antipsychotics. It is hypothesised that treatment-responsive patients will show a TMS-EEG response that resembles the TMS-EEG fingerprint of the corresponding antipsychotic whereas refractory patients will show a different TMS-EEG response. This is to associate the TMS-EEG fingerprints to therapeutic outcome in patients with schizophrenia. This will allow the student to evaluate whether TMS-EEG may provide a useful tool for predicting long-term antipsychotic treatment response in individual patients.\n\nWe will recruit patients from SLaM. The patients will have a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, will have been on monotherapy with one of the three antipsychotics, and will have been either responsive or refractory to treatment. They will undergo a series of EEG and EMG (electromyography) measurements during which TMS is applied and the process will last approximately 2 hours. The study will take place within the Clinical Research Facility (CRF) which comes under SLaM governance.\n
REC name
London - Camberwell St Giles Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/LO/1991
Date of REC Opinion
7 Feb 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion