Ketamine: Possible Hope Against Depression

Could ketamine, a molecule with a controversial reputation, help some patients with depression?

Some studies confirm thisBut experts they remain concerned about side effects.

Positive Investigations they accumulateespecially when no other treatment helps.

“We urgently need new treatments for severe depression, and ketamine shows great promise”

– sums up the Australian researcher AFP. Julienne Allanspecializing in mental health.

ketamine This is not a classic antidepressant. similar to those developed since the 1960s.

In principle, it is an anesthetic, but for about twenty years psychiatrists have considered it A Possible Solution Against Depression.

Unlike conventional antidepressants, ketamine works quicklyalthough it is unknown exactly what physiological mechanisms it provokes to relieve depressive symptoms.

That’s why, looks promising in two main cases: when specific and urgent treatment is needed, mainly in conditions of suicidal crises, although not only in these cases.

And when no classical medicine worksthat is, in cases of so-called resistant depressions.

Over the past few months, several research published in prestigious journals, confirmed interest in ketamine in these two cases.

Photography/@Pajaropolitico

A study published in April in the British Medical Journal shows how much the risk postpartum depression in young mothers was reduced after taking a single dose of esketamine, a derivative ketaminewhen you had a baby.

In the second case, a study published this Monday in the journal Nature Medicine shows that treatment with ketamine prevents further relapses of depression compared with patients treated with placebo.

Small size of these samples (a little more than a hundred people) and some methodological aspects suggest that it is still too early to draw firm conclusions.

But this research feed the body, favorable for use ketamine against depressionadvantage that there is no longer much doubt about this among psychiatrists.

– New opioid crisis? –

“It should be considered as an intermediate link between classical antidepressants and electric shocks”

– explains to AFP a psychiatrist from Jean Michelle Hofmannwhich marks a real “enthusiasm” in the medical community.

“For patients for whom classical treatments do not work, ketamine offers the opportunity to avoid electric shock.”

accurate.

But although esketamine has been approved for several years in the US and Europe for the treatment of some depression, some psychiatrists still resist.

Without denying the effectiveness ketaminethese specialists fear the risk of addictionespecially since the molecule is often used as a drug, the use of which is unfortunately highlighted in the media due to the overdose deaths of figures such as American actor Matthew Perry.

“Will ketamine soon be given to suicidal patients? It’s hard to say because there is a real risk that widespread use of ketamine could spark a new opioid crisis.”

– warned a psychiatrist in 2022 in the BMJ Riccardo De Giorgiregarding the health crisis that has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths in the United States due to the misuse or overuse of certain medicines.

• The challenge, therefore, is to reduce the risk of abuse as well as serious side effects such as the development of dissociative identity disorders.

This is the great interest of the study published in the journal Nature Medicine: to check new control mode belonging ketaminethrough a tablet that gradually releases the medicine into the body.

Photography/@ListinDiario

Potentially, this use is more practical and less risky than intravenous treatment or nasal spray. two forms in which esketamine currently approved.

Studying offers promising results from this point of view, although, again, they will have to be confirmed.

“Patients reported few side effects: euphoria, dissociation…”,

reports AFP about its main author, Paul Clay.

“So I don’t think these pills will attract people who want to abuse ketamine.”