Ketamine for Treatment Resistant Depression ?
Q.Current antidepressants usually take four to eight weeks to exert their effects. In a preliminary new study, a single intravenous dose of ketamine, a medication usually used in higher doses as an anesthetic, brought symptom relief to people with treatment-resistant depression in as little as two hours.
A.I spent this morning at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine on 99th Street. They are conducting a depression study using Ketamine plus an oral drug. The new theory on stress (depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc) is that the brain is flooded with Glutamate. Block the glutamate and the stress disappears. When I say the stress disappears I mean in about 2 hours with a Glutamate antagonist. Ketamine is just such an antagonist. Although Ketamine is an anesthetic, the dosage is so low that you don't even yawn. After my interview, we talked about the effect of Ketamine on conditions other than depression. The said they were testing everything. Including anxiety, OCD, PTSD etc. The original double blind study on Ketamine was done by the National Institute of Health and published in August of 2006. The study group were treatment resistant depressives with 30 to 40 years of depression without response to multiple antidepressants. The results, placebo group = 0, Ketamine group: 71% significant but partial response with 29% going into complete remission. 71% + 29% = 100%. All of the above occuring within 2 to 24 hours.
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