A poster presented today at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology’s annual meeting used Holmusk’s data analytics platform, NeuroBlu, to examine whether symptoms and functioning are distinct depression targets in the real world.

Despite the fact that a third of patients with major depressive disorder cannot achieve sustained symptom remission, symptom severity is a primary outcome for the majority of clinical trials that test the efficacy of depression treatments. Misalignment between clinical trial outcomes and real-world outcomes is a particular challenge in behavioral health, leading to results that may not be generalizable to all patients.

The study examined the relationship between disease severity (measured with the Clinical Global Impressions Scale [CGI-S],  and commonly used in clinical trials) and overall functioning (measured with the Global Assessment of Functioning [GAF] scale, variants of which are used in real-world practice). Researchers analyzed real-world data extracted from the electronic health records of over 400,000 patients and leveraged NeuroBlu to draw insights. 

Results showed the two measures were only modestly correlated, which suggests that symptom severity is not always indicative of a person’s day-to-day functioning. 

“While it is important to consider symptom severity when treating patients with depression, our analysis of real-world data demonstrates that severe symptoms are not always associated with concurrent poor functioning,” said Scott Kollins, PhD, Holmusk’s chief medical officer and an author of the poster. “There are known disconnects between clinical trials and what’s seen in real-world practice, and identifying these will ultimately help us to improve patient care. This is one of the reasons why we at Holmusk are so passionate about building the largest real-world data platform for behavioral health.”

Along with Kollins, Holmusk’s Miguel Renteria, PhD, and Soon Nan Wee also contributed to the poster. A. John Rush, MD, of Duke National University of Singapore was also an author.