feeling down?
Ketamine popular club drug - or "Special K" - may prove to be a powerful antidepressant
DEA
A drug you. 'Re more likely to find at a rave at a veterinarian's office can be the next big antidepressant. A single dose of ketamine, a veterinary anesthetic that is also known as the recreational drug "Special K" improved the mood of patients with major depression in as little as 2 hours, with effects lasting up to a week, according to a new study.
For half a century the treatment of depression have largely targeted a class of neurotransmitters called monoamines. Newer drugs, such as Prozac and Paxil, for example, work by blocking the absorption of serotonin, which makes more of the neurotransmitter available to stimulate neurons typically understimulated in depressed people. The monoamines are limited to particular tasks in the brain, however. A more general communication system based on an amino acid called glutamate. The glutamate system is associated with learning and memory, but it has been increasingly involved in mood regulation ( Science NOW, April 24, 1998).
A team led by Carlos Zarate, a psychopharmacologist at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues identified a key player in the glutamate system, a receptor known to N-methyl d-aspartate (NMDA). Seventeen patients who had major depression and did not respond to traditional antidepressants, were injected with a placebo or ketamine, a known NMDA receptor blocker. Based on their reported moods and observations of the team, 12 responded to treatment with 5 of them meet the criteria for remission from depression, the team reports in this month's issue of Archives of General Psychiatry . In addition, 5 patients experienced relief for at least a week from the single injection. The placebo patients reported no improvement
The really exciting part, Zarate said, is the speed with which the treatment works. Just a day after receiving a shot of ketamine, patients reported improvements equivalent to those reported after 2 months of conventional antidepressants. This is a big deal, he says, because the time lag associated with standard antidepressant can be fatal in cases of major depression; Suicidal behavior has been noted particularly in the first 9 days of treatment.
This study adds significantly to the mounting body of evidence that the glutamate system is a more specific target for therapies of depression, said John Krystal, a psychopharmacologist at Yale University, who led a study in 00 alluding to antidepressant effects of ketamine.
Sites "We need to develop approaches that do not simply repeat treatment strategies already in place ... and glutamate history as it emerged is very promising." on
- NIMH website on depression
- ketamine Facts
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