Patients With Anhedonia More Severely Affected Than Other Patients With MDD

Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and anhedonia (MDD-ANH) may have more severe depressive symptoms than patients with MDD and no/low anhedonia (other-MDD) as well as lower percentages of remission in the year following initial assessment, according to results from a retrospective cohort study presented via poster at Psych Congress Elevate in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

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Patient Health Questionnaire 9-items (PHQ-9) scores recorded within 1 month of diagnosis were used as the baseline assessment. Data of over 500,000 patients with MDD was gathered from OM1, Inc. Prominent anhedonia was defined as a score of ≥2 on item 1 of the PHQ-9 among moderately to severely depressed patients (PHQ-9 total score of ≥10). Symptom burden and remission was defined as a PHQ-9 total score less than 5 and was assessed during 4 follow-up time windows: 0-3, 3-6, 6-9, and 9-12-months. 

In total, 5709 patients were included—4255 (74.5%) MDD-ANH patients and 1454 (25.5%) other-MDD patients. At baseline, MDD-ANH patients had a mean PHQ-9 score of 18.2 compared to 13.5 for other-MDD. The percentage of patients in remission throughout the follow-up was lower among MDD-ANH patients (21.2%, 28.1%, 27.2%, and 30.0%) compared to other-MDD patients (27.0%, 32.9%, 33.1%, and 32.6%), respectively. 

This study was funded by Janssen Scientific Affairs, LLC.

Reference 
Severtson SG. Patient-reported depressive symptoms among individuals diagnosed with major depressive disorder with and without prominent anhedonia using a real-world dataset. Poster presented at Psych Congress Elevate; May 30-June 2, 2024; Las Vegas, Nevada.