Rafaël DELGADO Y PALACIOS
Telephone: (+32) 3 265 2762
Fax: (+32) 3 265 2774
Faculty of Pharmaceutical, Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences
Department of Biomedical Sciences
Address
Campus Drie Eiken
D.UC.114
Universiteitsplein 1
2610 Wilrijk
RECENT RESEARCH TOPICS
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the leading psychiatric disorders in the western world. Besides the individual burden, MDD has a significant impact on society. The total annual socio-economic cost is estimated to be well over € 100 billion in Europe alone. Nonetheless, the MDD diagnosis is exclusively based on the symptoms described by the patient during a clinical interview, which can be very subjective. Therefore, the search for accurate objective diagnostic tools is essential. In addition, the development of new efficient therapies is necessary, since existing therapies can have dangerous side effects.
Making use of a stress induced rat model of MDD, we explore the possibility to develop non-invasive imaging markers which can be applied to improve diagnostic accuracy and to evaluate the efficacy of newly developed drugs. With multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) morphometrical, microstructural, and neurochemical features of the brain are investigated in search for such sensitive and MDD specific markers.
