A new poster presented by Holmusk at ISPOR 2022 offers new real-world evidence into whether multiple antidepressant medications help patients with difficult-to-treat depression.

The Holmusk research team stratified and analyzed data from 3,659 patients using NeuroBlu, the company’s flagship data and analytics platform that enables uniquely powerful evidence generation in the behavioral health space.

Patients were grouped into cohorts based on how many antidepressant medications they were prescribed during the six-month observation period, from zero medications to more than four. Most patients (38%) were prescribed one medication, although another 41% experienced antidepressant medication polypharmacy: 28% received two, 10% received three, and 3% received more than four medications.

Researchers then assessed disease severity and daily functioning using the Clinical Global Impression Scale-Severity (CGI-S) and Global Assessment of Function (GAF), respectively, and mapped changes over time.

Results from this study can be viewed here.

“Examining real-world data from patients with difficult-to-treat depression helped us shed light on the fact that these cases are often resistant to medications typically used to treat this condition,” said Matthew Valko, MS, Director of Data Science at Holmusk and lead author of the poster. “It’s important for us to understand what is working and what is not as we continue to work with patients to develop new treatment options that can improve care.”

Additional Holmusk authors and contributors to this study include Guruprabha Guruswamy, MS; John Rush, MD, MBA; and Scott Kollins, PhD.

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