Efficacy of MRI-guided rTMS for post-traumatic stress disorder by modulating amygdala activity: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

Introduction: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prevalent and severe psychiatric disorder. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) targeting the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex provides limited relief for symptoms of PTSD. This study will be conducted to validate the efficacy of MRI-guided rTMS in targeting the sites most closely associated with the amygdala for patients with PTSD. We hypothesise that the intervention will improve clinical symptoms by decreasing amygdala activity in patients.

Methods And Analysis: A randomised, double-blind, sham-controlled trial will be conducted. Forty-eight eligible patients with PTSD will be randomly assigned to receive either active or sham MRI-guided rTMS for 10 consecutive days after the initial MRI scans. MRI scans will be recollected at the end of the intervention. Clinical assessments will be performed at baseline, treatment day 5, treatment day 10, and 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 8 weeks after completion of the intervention to monitor changes in clinical symptoms. The primary assessment outcome is the change in PTSD symptoms between baseline and treatment day 10, as measured by the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5. Repeated measures analysis of variance will be performed using statistical software SPSS V.26.0. The significance level will be set at 0.05.

Ethics And Dissemination: Ethical approval has been obtained from the Ethics Committee of Xijing Hospital in Xi'an, China (KY20222176-X-1), and the trial has been registered on ClinicalTrials.gov. The findings of this trial will be disseminated at academic conferences or published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Trial Registration Number: NCT05544110.