ArticleFrontiers in psychiatry2023
Home-administered transcranial direct current stimulation with asynchronous remote supervision in the treatment of depression: feasibility, tolerability, and clinical effectiveness.
Article in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 4 citations in OpenAlex.
- Remotely Supervised, Home-Based Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for Major Depressive Disorder: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.JMIR mental health · 2026Pooled it
- Physical Therapy for Treatment-Resistant Depression A Comprehensive Review of Efficacy, Safety, and Evidence Grading.Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment · 2026Review
- Home use of low-intensity transcranial electrical stimulation in clinical practice: an IFCN handbook chapter.Clinical neurophysiology practice · 2026Review
- Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) for Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD): Why and How?Brain sciences · 2025Review
- Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to Ameliorate Post-Stroke Cognitive Impairment.Brain sciences · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction Background: Depression is an often chronic condition, characterized by wide-ranging physical, cognitive and psychosocial symptoms that can lead to disability, premature mortality or suicide. It affects 350 million people globally, yet up to 30% do not respond to traditional treatment, creating an urgent need for novel non-pharmacological treatments. This open-label naturalistic study assesses the practical feasibility, tolerability, and clinical effectiveness of home-administered transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) with asynchronous remote supervision, in the treatment of depression. Method: Over the course of 3 weeks, 40 patients with depression received psychotherapy and half of this group also received daily bi-frontal tDCS stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These patients received tDCS for 30 min per session with the anode placed over F3 and the cathode over F4, at an intensity of 2 mA for 21 consecutive days. We measured patients' level of depression symptoms at four time points using the Beck Depression Inventory, before treatment and at 1-week intervals throughout the treatment period. We monitored practical feasibility such as daily protocol compliance and tolerability including side effects, with the PlatoScience cloud-based remote supervision platform. Results: Of the 20 patients in the tDCS group, 90% were able to comply with the protocol by not missing more than three of their assigned sessions, and none dropped out of the study. No serious adverse events were reported, with only 14 instances of mild to moderate side effects and two instances of scalp pain rated as severe, out of a total of 420 stimulation sessions. Patients in the tDCS group showed a significantly greater reduction in depression symptoms after 3 weeks of treatment, compared to the treatment as usual (TAU) group [t(57.2) = 2.268, p = 0.027]. The tDCS group also showed greater treatment response (50%) and depression remission rates (75%) compared to the TAU group (5 and 30%, respectively). Discussion Conclusion: These findings provide a possible indication of the clinical effectiveness of home-administered tDCS for the treatment of depression, and its feasibility and tolerability in combination with asynchronous supervision.
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