Groundbreaking Study Demonstrates Advantages of BrainsWay Deep TMS in Treating Major Depressive Disorder

First head-to-head, randomized controlled trial of its kind comparing Deep TMS, TMS and medication in depression patients published in July issue of the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

JERUSALEM, Israel and HACKENSACK, N.J., , July 18, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — BrainsWay Ltd. (NASDAQ: BWAY, TASE: BWAY), a global leader in the advanced non-invasive treatment of brain disorders, today announced the publication of a third-party study which demonstrated that Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (Deep TMS™) plus standard medication was significantly more effective at reducing depression levels among Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) patients compared with standard medication alone.

“This is an important study, because it provides the first head-to-head comparison of two different technologies that use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to treat depression,” said Markus Heilig, MD, PhD, a Professor of Psychiatry at Linköping University. “Subjects in the study demonstrated clearly higher response rates with Deep TMS, which stimulates more deeply and broadly into the brain, than with figure-8* TMS.”

The Magstim® Rapid² device was used in this study. (Magstim Company, Spring Gardens, UK)

Researchers at the Psychiatric Hospital “Sveti Ivan” in Croatia conducted this 228-patient randomized controlled study (NCT02917499) independent of industry support. The results appear in the July 2019 issue of the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

In this study, a total of 228 patients (the intent to treat population, or ITT) were randomized to either four weeks of Deep TMS (n = 72) or standard TMS (n = 75) in conjunction with standard pharmacotherapy, or to a control group treated with pharmacotherapy alone (n = 81). The primary endpoint of the study was the proportion of patients achieving remission, defined as a Hamilton Depression rating scale (HAM-D17) score of ≤ 7 after four weeks of therapy (20 treatments).

The remission rate for both the Deep TMS (H1-coil) group (59.7%) and the standard rTMS (figure 8-coil) group (42.7%) was significantly higher than with the control group (11.1%) in the ITT population (p < .001 and p = .001, respectively).

Other key findings from the study include:

• The response rate (defined as ≥50% decrease in HAM-D17) was significantly greater with Deep TMS plus pharmacotherapy (66.7%) than with standard rTMS plus pharmacotherapy (44.0%) (p = .04).
• There was a trend toward improved remission rate with Deep TMS (59.7%) compared with standard rTMS (42.7%). Although this trend did not achieve statistical significance in the ITT population, it did achieve statistical significance in the subset of ITT patients who entered the study with moderate-to-severe MDD (HAM-D17 ≥17).
• The HAM-D17 was lowered by 59% in the Deep TMS group, 41% in the standard rTMS group (P = 0.048), and 17% in the control group (P < 0.001 vs Deep TMS ; P = 0.003 vs standard rTMS).
• No difference was seen in safety or tolerability between Deep TMS and standard rTMS.

“We applaud the authors for completing this landmark study confirming the value of adding Deep TMS therapy as a standard treatment option for patients suffering from moderate to severe depression,” said Yaacov Michlin, CEO of BrainsWay.

About BrainsWay

BrainsWay is a commercial stage medical device company focused on the development and sale of non-invasive neuromodulation products using the Company’s proprietary Deep Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (Deep TMS) technology for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), for which BrainsWay received marketing authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2013 (for MDD) and in August 2018 (for OCD). BrainsWay is currently conducting clinical trials of Deep TMS in other disorders, including smoking cessation and post-traumatic stress disorder, and is planning trials for opioid addiction, fatigue in multiple sclerosis (MS) and post-stroke rehabilitation.