Dunlop BW, Parikh SV, Rothschild AJ, et al. - In view of previous research suggesting less sensitivity of the 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D17) in detecting differences between active treatment and placebo for major depressive disorder (MDD) than the HAM-D6 scale, which focuses on six core depression symptoms, researchers examined if HAM-D6 confers greater sensitivity when comparing two active MDD treatment arms. For this post hoc analysis, they used data from the intent-to-treat cohort (N = 1,541) of the Genomics Used to Improve DEpression Decisions (GUIDED) trial, a rater- and patient-blinded randomized controlled trial comparing combinatorial pharmacogenomics-guided care with treatment as usual (TAU) in patients with MDD. The guided-care arm exhibited statistically significant benefit over TAU at week 8, when the HAM-D6 (∆ = 4.4%) was adopted as the continuous measure of symptom improvement, but not when utilizing the HAM-D17 (∆ = 3.2%). HAM-D6 detected the utility of pharmacogenomics-guided treatment over TAU indicating its value for future biomarker-guided trials comparing active treatment arms.