Research of lines in Depressive Disorder

The main lines of research are focused on increasing knowledge as regards the causes of the disorder, in improving the capacity to make the diagnosis, and in improving the efficacy of the treatment (both in curing the active episode of the disorder and also to prevent relapses).

• As regards the possible causes of the illness, current research is mainly focused on finding out the genetic changes that cause or lead to the appearance of the illness, and whether there is an inflammatory process as a cause or factor that favours the onset of the disorder.
• Within the field of how to improve the diagnosis, it mainly attempts to make advances in the obtaining of any biological marker (of the blood or brain, for example, using magnetic resonance-type tests) specific for depressive disorder, but also on how it is possible to improve clinical interviews to pick up the symptoms better that the patients have.
• In the field of the treatment, studies are mainly focused on obtaining drugs with mechanisms of action clearly different from the drugs that are currently available (and that do not achieve the clinical remission of all the patients).