European Neuropsychopharmacology
August 2018
Lucie Bartova, Konstantinos Papageorgiou, Ivan Milenkovic et al.
Rapid anti-suicidal and antidepressant effects of ketamine have repeatedly been confirmed in unipolar and bipolar depression. Although meaningful antidepressant efficacy of ketamine has also been shown in depressed patients with a history of psychotic symptoms, its administration in psychotic disorders has largely been neglected due to its potential to exacerbate dissociative or psychotic...
Schizophrenia Research
August 1, 2018
L Stan Leung, Jingyi Ma
We reviewed the participation of the septohippocampal system in an animal model of schizophrenia that was acutely induced by systemic injection of an N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist such as phencyclidine, MK-801 and ketamine. The NMDA receptor antagonist-induced model of schizophrenia is characterized by behavioral and electrophysiological disruptions, including a decrease in...
Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology
August 1, 2018
Shaina Archer, Carson Chrenek, Jennifer Swainson
Abstract Background Previous studies have demonstrated ketamine to have a rapid antidepressant effect in some patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD), but the effect is unfortunately not sustained in the long term. In this study, we report on the clinical use of ongoing maintenance ketamine infusions in a group of patients with TRD, beyond an acute course of 6 to 8 ketamine...
The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
July 23, 2018
Samuel T. Wilkinson, Rachel B. Katz, Mesut Toprak et al.
88 citations
OBJECTIVE: Ketamine has emerged as a rapid-acting antidepressant, though controversy remains whether sufficient data exist to justify its use outside of research protocols. In October 2014, the authors' institution began providing ketamine as an off-label therapy on a case-by-case basis for patients unable to participate in research protocols. Here, the participant experience during 29 months...
The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology
July 17, 2018
Kai Zhang, Min Ma, Chao Dong et al.
30 citations
Background: A recent study demonstrated that inflammatory bone markers play a role in the antidepressant functions of (R,S)-ketamine in treatment-resistant patients with depression. We examined the effect of inflammatory bone markers in the antidepressant functions of (R)-ketamine and (S)-ketamine in a chronic social defeat stress model. Methods: Behavioral tests for antidepressant actions were...
Neuropharmacology
July 15, 2018
Ashley M Fortress, Ian M Smith, Kevin C H Pang
Anxiety disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) share a common feature of pathological avoidance behavior. The Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rat has been used as a model of anxiety vulnerability, expressing a behaviorally inhibited temperament, acquiring avoidance behavior more rapidly and displaying extinction-resistant avoidance compared to Sprague Dawley (SD) rats. Subanesthetic levels of...
Neuropharmacology
July 15, 2018
Maria Amat-Foraster, Anders A. Jensen, Niels Plath et al.
Sub-anesthetic doses of the non-competitive N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDA-R) antagonist ketamine evoke transient psychotomimetic effects, followed by persistent antidepressant effects in treatment-resistant depressed patients and rodents through still poorly understood mechanisms. Since phencyclidine (PCP) disinhibits thalamo-cortical networks by blocking NMDA-Rs on GABAergic neurons of...
European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience
July 14, 2018
Kenji Hashimoto, Chun Yang
The N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist (R,S)ketamine has been hailed as the most important advance in the treatment of depression for the past 50 years. The rapid and sustained antidepressant effects of (R,S)-ketamine have spurred a great deal of research interest, with growing off-label use for the treatment of depression, although the concerns about the safety of repeated...
Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
July 10, 2018
Glòria Salort, María Álvaro-Bartolomé, Jesús A García-Sevilla
Ketamine (KET) is an antidepressant and hypnotic drug acting as an antagonist at excitatory NMDA glutamate receptors. The working hypothesis postulated that KET-induced sleep in mice results in dysregulation of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) MEK-ERK sequential phosphorylation and upregulation of survival p-FADD and other neuroplastic markers in brain. Low (5-15 mg/kg) and high (150...
The Brown University Psychopharmacology Update
July 9, 2018
A proof‐of‐concept study involving 68 participants found that intranasal esketamine was more effective than placebo in the short term in reducing depressive symptoms in patients at imminent risk for suicide. Improvement over placebo was apparent four hours after administration — an important finding given that conventional treatments for depression take substantially longer to generate an...
Neuroreport
July 4, 2018
Wei Pan, Guang-Fen Zhang, Hui-Hui Li et al.
Depression is present in a large proportion of patients suffering from chronic pain, and yet the underlying mechanisms remain to be elucidated. Neuroligins (NLs), as a family of cell-adhesion proteins, are involved in synaptic formation and have been linked to various neuropsychiatric disorders. Here, we studied the alterations in NL1 and NL2 in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the anterior...
Biological Psychiatry
July 1, 2018
Chinnakkaruppan Adaikkan, Elham Taha, Iliana Barrera et al.
Ketamine is an N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonist, which on administration produces fast-acting antidepressant responses in patients with major depressive disorder. Yet, the mechanism underlying the antidepressant action of ketamine remains unclear. To unravel the mechanism of action of ketamine, we treated wild-type C57BL/6 mice with calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II...
Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior
July 2018
Yun Wang, Liming Xie, Ce Gao et al.
Depression is a common, debilitating mood disorder, but currently available antidepressants have several major drawbacks. Both ketamine and scopolamine attract more and more attention due to their rapid and sustained antidepressant activities. However, the molecular and cellular mechanism that underlies the therapeutic action of ketamine and scopolamine still remain to be elucidated....
Frontiers in neuroendocrinology
July 2018
Alexia V Williams, Brian C Trainor
A roadblock to successful treatment for anxiety and depression is the high proportion of individuals that do not respond to existing treatments. Different underlying neurobiological mechanisms may drive similar symptoms, so a more personalized approach to treatment could be more successful. There is increasing evidence that sex is an important biological variable modulating efficacy of...
FOCUS: The Journal of Lifelong Learning in Psychiatry
July 1, 2018
Gerard Sanacora, Rachel B. Katz
16 citations
A growing series of clinical trials and case series now suggest that ketamine-originally used as an anesthetic agent-potentially offers an exciting new treatment option for severe depression. Increasing numbers of studies show that ketamine can provide prompt relief for many depressed patients, including those with severe treatment-refractory depression. Although the effects of a single...
Journal of Psychiatric Practice
July 1, 2018
Lai Fong Chan, Choon Leng Eu, Shean Yih Soh et al.
18 citations
Ketamine has shown effectiveness as a rapid-acting antidepressant with antisuicidal effects in terms of reduction of suicidal ideation in the short term. However, the evidence for long-term maintenance ketamine therapy for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and suicidal behavior is limited. This case series (N=13) highlights the role of adjunctive serial maintenance ketamine infusions in...
Pharmacological Reviews
June 26, 2018
Panos Zanos, Ruin Moaddel, Patrick J. Morris et al.
1,272 citations
Ketamine, a racemic mixture consisting of (S)- and (R)-ketamine, has been in clinical use since 1970. Although best characterized for its dissociative anesthetic properties, ketamine also exerts analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and antidepressant actions. We provide a comprehensive review of these therapeutic uses, emphasizing drug dose, route of administration, and the time course of these...
Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology
June 21, 2018
Moritz Haaf, Gregor Leicht, Stjepan Curic et al.
53 citations
BACKGROUND: The observation that N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptor (NMDAR) antagonists such as ketamine transiently induce schizophrenia-like positive, negative and cognitive symptoms has led to a paradigm shift from dopaminergic to glutamatergic dysfunction in pharmacological models of schizophrenia. NMDAR hypofunction can explain many schizophrenia symptoms directly due to...
Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences
June 19, 2018
R. Pérez-Esparza, T. Corona, R. Ruiz-García et al.
Growing evidence of the rapid antidepressant effects of ketamine represents a promising advance in treatment-resistant depression (TRD) therapeutics. Most studies provide information after treatment washout, reporting response up to 7 days and remission up to 3-5 days after a single dose.
Psychopharmacology
June 14, 2018
Cheol Lee, Juhwan Lee, Gilho Lee et al.
It has been known that anesthetic adjuvants such as dexamethasone or ketamine might change mood. This study aimed to investigate the effects of a single dose of each drug individually along with their combined usage on postoperative mood changes in patients undergoing gynecologic surgery. Two hundred ninety-seven patients randomly allocated were divided into three groups. Group K (n = 99)...