Center for Individualized Medicine

Major Depressive Disorder: ALMOND Study

An artificial intelligence (AI) system is helping Mayo Clinic researchers and clinicians identify effective personalized treatments for people diagnosed with major depressive disorder, a leading cause of medical disability worldwide.

This unique new approach, called the Analytics and Machine Learning Framework for Omics and Clinical Big Data (ALMOND) Study, uses an AI algorithm to discover patterns and unique characteristics in participants' genomic data and health histories. This can help healthcare professionals choose the right treatments to benefit each patient.

Major depressive disorder is a chronic and severe psychiatric illness that affects more than 15 million people in the U.S. Treatment choices are often made on a trial-and-error basis. As a result, patients can receive several months of ineffective treatments before they and their healthcare teams know the treatments aren't working.

In a preliminary study, the ALMOND algorithm was 75% to 85% accurate in predicting whether common antidepressant drugs would work for specific participants. This is compared with about 60% accuracy when predictions are based on clinical, demographic and social factors alone. With the ALMOND Study, Mayo Clinic is working to transform the management of major depressive disorder to serve all patients across all treatment settings.

Participation

The study is closed to new participants. To have been eligible to participate in the ALMOND Study, volunteers must have been:

Between 18 and 64 years old.
Receiving outpatient care for nonpsychotic major depressive disorder.
Willing to undergo an assessment by the study team before enrollment.

Eligible volunteers could not have been:

Psychiatrically hospitalized or in an active suicidal crisis requiring hospitalization.
Currently undergoing electroconvulsive therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation or deep brain stimulation.