Your Depression Risk Can Be Measured by the Changes in Your Heart Rate, Doctors Say

Doctors, for the first time, have shown that measuring the heart can dependably specify if a person is depressed or not. 

Practically, according to reports, "This may give clinicians an objective 'early warning' of probable depression," and a quick indication if a therapy is working or not, thus, the way of a quicker and responsive treatment.

Showing results of this pioneering research at the ECNP virtual congress, Frankfurt-based Goethe University's Dr. Carmen Schiweck said, their pilot research proposes that by merely gauging one's heart rate for 24 hours, they can already "tell with 90-percent accuracy if a person" is presently depressed or not.

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The Link Between Depression and Heart Rate

Researchers have presented that heart rate is linked to depression, although until at present, they have not understood exactly how one is associated with the other.

Partly, since heart rates can rapidly fluctuate, depression both occurs and leaves over an extended period, with treatments more often than not, taking months to show effect.

This then makes it difficult to determine if changes in an individual's depressive condition might be linked to heart rate or not.

With these explanations, Schiweck, the lead researcher said, two innovative mechanisms in their research were the heart rate's continuous registration "for several days and nights," and the utilization of "ketamine," a new antidepressant which can boost depression "more or less instantly."

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What's the Role of Ketamine in One's Depression State?

Research indicates ketamine is known to have a history, both as a party drug and anesthetic. Nonetheless, in December 2019, it was licensed as a major antidepressant or treatment for major depression in Europe following the introduction in the United States several months earlier.

Unlike ketamine which rapidly acts, with results frequently coming out in minutes, traditional antidepressants typically take weeks to take effect.

As Dr. Schiweck explained, "We knew that something was going on" to associate heart rate with "psychiatric disorders". However, they did not know what it was and whether such a link would have any clinical significance.

Scientists had shown in the past that depressed patients had constantly higher heart rates and lower variability of heart rates. Still, due to the time it takes for depression to be treated, the lead researchers added, it had been a struggle to follow up "and relate any improvement to heart rate."

But when they realized that ketamine results in rapid improvement in mood, Schiweck continued, they knew that they might be able to use that realization to understand the connection between depression and heart rate.

24-Hour Heart Rate

What's most exciting in this recent finding was that researchers were able to utilize the "24-hour heart rate 'biomarker' for depression."

Specifically, as indicated in the study, heart rates were gauged through the use of a wearable mini-ECG. Following measurement, data was fed to an AI or artificial intelligent program, which was able to categorize correctly, all controls and patients as being either depressed or healthy.

Typically, explained Schiweck, "Heart rates are higher during the day and lower at night." Interestingly, he added, it appears that the decrease in the heart right at night is "impaired in depression." This change seems to be a new way of determining if a patient is at risk to develop depression or deteriorate. 

Commenting on this new finding, Amsterdam University Medical Centres' Professor Brenda Pennix said, what was recently presented "is an innovative proof-of-concept study."

The professor added, her own group had studied in the past, short-term heart rate variability in more than a thousand depressed individuals and controls, and they were not able to identify a "consistent differentiation," and discovered that antidepressants had more effect than "depression status itself.

But this study, Pennix said, monitored variability of heart rate in the ambulatory background for many days and nights, and provides distinctive night and day data on the autonomic nervous system. There is a need for an investigation if these interesting findings hold in more extensive and diverse treatment backgrounds.

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