Comparing transcranial magnetic stimulation and esketamine treatment response trajectories in resistant depression
Lindsay L. Benster, Jordan N. Kohn, Benjamin Wade, Noah Stapper, Cory R. Weissman, Jean-Philippe Miron, Zafiris J. Daskalakis, Lawrence G. Appelbaum · 2026
Read Comparing transcranial magnetic stimulation and esketamine treatment response trajectories in resistant depression by Lindsay L. Benster, Jordan N. Kohn, Benjamin Wade, Noah Stapper, Cory R. Weissman, Jean-Philippe Miron, Zafiris J. Daskalakis, Lawrence G. Appelbaum (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13401942.txt.
Description
Benster and team compare, in 2026, how quickly two approved treatments work in treatment-resistant depression, using UC San Diego Health records from 2017 to 2025. Adults received either repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, 279 patients, or intranasal esketamine, 93 patients. Response meant at least a 50 percent drop on the PHQ-9 depression scale, with weighting to balance the groups on age, trauma, anxiety, drug use, and baseline severity.
Esketamine acted faster: median time to response was 36 days against 49 days for magnetic stimulation, with a hazard ratio of 1.62 for response speed in the weighted model. Suicidal ideation improved faster too, at a median of 9 days versus 26 days for the stimulation group. Final response and remission rates also favored esketamine, 68.8 and 45.2 percent against 59.4 and 40.1 percent, converging by about 90 days. In the stimulation cohort, anxiety and benzodiazepine use predicted slower response.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Lindsay L. Benster, Jordan N. Kohn, Benjamin Wade, Noah Stapper, Cory R. Weissman, Jean-Philippe Miron, Zafiris J. Daskalakis, Lawrence G. Appelbaum |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 32 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |