How a Simple Finger-prick Blood Test Helps Find the Best Medication for Depression

How a Simple Finger-prick Blood Test Helps Find the Best Medication For Depression

What if you could get a simple blood test to determine the best medicine for depression? Many patients struggle to find the right medications and waste both time and money on drugs that do not help. However, a new study reveals that a simple finger-prick blood test may offer the solution.

How a Blood Test Can Help

A study, published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, focuses on the potential benefits of using a blood test to help find the right medication for depression. The blood test can reveal inflammation levels by measuring C-reactive protein (CRP). High levels of inflammation in the body can affect how drugs work.

A previous study, published in Nature Reviews Immunology, found that inflammation could lead to non-responsiveness to antidepressants. This means that a patient can follow the doctor’s orders and take drugs correctly without seeing any benefits or improvement.

The End of Trial and Error

Current depression treatments often involve a trial and error process. Doctors prescribe different drugs and hope that they will work, but there is no guarantee that they will be successful. Unfortunately, this process can discourage patients and make them give up on treatments completely.

Researchers hope that by using the simple finger-prick blood test to measure inflammation levels in the patients, they will be able to find the right medications faster. It can often take 12 weeks or longer to determine if a medication is improving depression, so the blood test should cut down on the wait times and simplify the process.

How to Use the Study Findings

The first step is to talk to your doctor if your current depression medication is not working. Your doctor may or may not be aware of the new study, so you have to stay informed. Researchers hope that more doctors will be willing to test their patients for inflammation in the future.