Presently, Medics have to trust trial and error to select drugs for patients with depression, meaning that almost half of the time the first type of antidepressant that is given to the patient fails to work.
The researchers from King’s College London say that checking a patient’s blood may help to find accurate treatment.
Researchers have tried out their blood test on a minute number of volunteers, altogether 140 people that have depression.
To see how well the blood test will work in the real world, the test would have to be done on a larger scale.
The blood test, described in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, is the result of years of investigation.
It identifies two precise markers of inflammation, a compound called macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) and another named interleukin-1beta.
