New Brain Scans Can Spot PTSD

Neuroscientists think they may have found a scientific method to identify post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) using a brain imaging method called magnetoencephalography (MEG). In the test study, the scientists studied 74 vets with PTSD and 250 civilians without and were able to spot the PTSD sufferers with 90% accuracy. "MEG machines are a fast, sensitive and accurate way to measure electric activity in the brain. Whereas CT scans and MRIs record brain signals every few seconds, MEGs can do it by the millisecond, catching biomarkers and brain activity that the other tests inevitably miss. The study could be a breakthrough for the military, who've been scrambling to address a surge in post-traumatic symptoms among newly returning vets. Right now, troops are evaluated by mental health experts, but diagnosis is a crap-shoot: symptoms can take years to show up, and vary from person to person, even among those exposed to the same traumas. The Pentagon's already been pushing for more objective, systematized diagnosis tools, like portable at-home sleep monitors and genetic testing to detect PTSD vulnerability. They've even launched a program to create stress-mitigating pharmaceuticals."

Comments

what about the other 10%

[dobedobedew]

So if you are in the 10% that doesn't get detected you're SOL? I hope they can increase the accuracy of this.

Re:what about the other 10%

[Anonymous Coward]

Not for nothing, but I went 20 years without being diagnosed. I understand the attempt at humor, but it isn't funny to me.

PTSD is not just some dude screaming "incoming" and diving under the table at Thanksgiving. It has a measurable effect upon every decision in a person's life. Just stepping into a restaurant is a tense and fearful experience that can last for hours. Hours in which I must scan every person coming into the room for potential threats, monitor the exits, sit so that no one can approach me without my knowing. My family knows that to catch my unawares is, at the very best, a chance to have me yell at them as if they'd done something wrong by entering the same room without announcing themselves.

When I head into wallmart, I have to plan my route to minimize the stress, I use weird checkout methods, like buying a box of vitamins and then doing my checkout at the pharmacy to avoid the lines where I am vulnerable to attack. For 20 years I thought that everyone looked between the parked cars as they walked down the street, planned the move to cover in case there was gunfire, looked at every window and rooftop for snipers. I didn't realize that what I took for survival instinct was way beyond what almost everyone else did to safe guard themselves. I have been emotionally removed from my daughter's entire life, I have no emotional reaction to the suffering of others, as I instinctively believe that it is their fault for not being ready to deal with whatever the situation.

If this technology can help get people diagnosed and in a proper treatment regimen, then it is a worth while venture. A 10% miss beats 40% (http://ajol.info/index.php/ajpsy/article/viewFile/30263/30480)[pdf]

I for one, salute our new MEG Overloards

Re:False positives

[Tacvek]

Sure, My university has a subscription. Let me give you the numbers:

Test subjects:
All 75 test group members had confirmed PTSD as the primary diagnosis, using the standard structured clinical interviews for PTSD. There were many variations as to cause of PTSD some from combat others from before they became soldiers. 69 test subjects were male, and 5 were women.

Control group:
250 members from the general public in the same age range as the test subjects. 151 men, 49 women.
Complete nurological histories, and multiple interview examinations were performed to help exclude general public members with latent PTSD.

The test with the paramters used by the team had the following results:

72 true positives.
2 false negatives.
31 false positives.
219 true negatives.

According to the paper this is
97.3% Sensitivity
87.6% Specificity
92.4% Accuracy
Chi squared-statistic: 189.8
P value: .001
phi coefficient: .765
odds ratio: 254.3