Trial reportBiological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging2023
Accelerated Brain Aging in Adults With Major Depressive Disorder Predicts Poorer Outcome With Sertraline: Findings From the EMBARC Study.
Trial report in Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Predictive values of pre-treatment brain age models to rTMS effects in neurocognitive disorder with depression: Secondary analysis of a randomised sham-controlled clinical trial.Dialogues in clinical neuroscience · 2024Trial
- Sex-specific neurodevelopmental pathways to depressive symptoms.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Frontal Cortex Entropy Derived From Resting-State fNIRS for Brain Age Prediction in Major Depressive Disorder.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
- Deep learning-based brain age predicts stroke recurrence in acute ischemic cerebrovascular disease.NPJ digital medicine · 2025Article
- Exploratory study of the dysregulation of age-related changes in neural/glial antigen 2 and neuroinflammation markers in individuals with major depression.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2025Article
- Lifestyle, Early-life, and Genetic Health Risk Factors Underlying the Brain Age Gap: A Mega-Analysis Across 3,934 Individuals from the ENIGMA MDD Consortium.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Increased Brain Age Among Psychiatrically Healthy Adults Exposed to Childhood Trauma.Brain and behavior · 2025Article
- Breakthroughs and challenges for generating brain network-based biomarkers of treatment response in depression.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Review
- Atypical Brain Aging and Its Association With Working Memory Performance in Major Depressive Disorder.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2024Article
- Sex-difference in the association between social drinking, structural brain aging and cognitive function in older individuals free of cognitive impairment.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundMajor depressive disorder (MDD) may be associated with accelerated brain aging (higher brain age than chronological age). This report evaluated whether brain age is a clinically useful biomarker by checking its test-retest reliability using magnetic resonance imaging scans acquired 1 week apart and by evaluating the association of accelerated brain aging with symptom severity and antidepressant treatment outcomes.
methodsBrain age was estimated in participants of the EMBARC (Establishing Moderators and Biosignatures of Antidepressant Response in Clinical Care) study using T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance imaging (MDD n = 290; female n = 192; healthy control participants n = 39; female n = 24). Intraclass correlation coefficient was used for baseline-to-week-1 test-retest reliability. Association of baseline Δ brain age (brain age minus chronological age) with Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-17 and Concise Health Risk Tracking Self-Report domains (impulsivity, suicide propensity [measures: pessimism, helplessness, perceived lack of social support, and despair], and suicidal thoughts) were assessed at baseline (linear regression) and during 8-week-long treatment with either sertraline or placebo (repeated-measures mixed models).
resultsMean ± SD baseline chronological age, brain age, and Δ brain age were 37.1 ± 13.3, 40.6 ± 13.1, and 3.1 ± 6.1 years in MDD and 37.1 ± 14.7, 38.4 ± 12.9, and 0.6 ± 5.5 years in healthy control groups, respectively. Test-retest reliability was high (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.98-1.00). Higher baseline Δ brain age in the MDD group was associated with higher baseline impulsivity and suicide propensity and predicted smaller baseline-to-week-8 reductions in Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-17, impulsivity, and suicide propensity with sertraline but not with placebo.
conclusionsBrain age is a reliable and potentially clinically useful biomarker that can prognosticate antidepressant treatment outcomes.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.