While problematic smartphone use screening tools are widely used and increasingly evaluated in student populations, their applicability and clinical stability across diverse groups-particularly those with comorbid substance use-remain unclear. Moreover, the overlap between problematic smartphone use and internet gaming disorder has not been well established in clinical contexts. This study...
Fa yi xue za zhiApril 25, 2025Yu-Meng Zuo, Wei Han, Jian-Bo Zhang et al.
Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic. It is clinically used as a surgical anesthetic or anesthetic inducer and has a certain degree of mental dependence. Its abuse can lead to nerve damage, adverse emotional reactions and other toxic side effects. The primary mechanism by which ketamine exerts its pharmacological effects is to block N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDAR). It also functions...
Oral esketamine for patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) could offer certain advantages over other routes, such as intravenous or intranasal, but it has not been systematically studied in a real-world setting. Here we present results from a relatively large naturalistic study to evaluate the effectiveness, tolerability, and safety of oral esketamine in patients with TRD. One...
Background: Esketamine is a rapidly acting antidepressant with robust efficacy in treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Diminishing therapeutic effects and attenuated side effects have been reported after long-term use. This study aimed to investigate its long-term pharmacokinetics and factors that may contribute to reduced efficacy over time in patients with TRD by evaluating the potential...
Ketamine challenge is a suitable animal model for evaluating cognitive, positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia, besides oxidative stress, cholinergic, dopaminergic, GABAergic and nitrergic dysfunctions observed in the disease. Effects of Ficus platyphylla (FP) methanol extract on behavioral alterations triggered by ketamine were investigated in forced swim, open field, and new object...
The probabilistic reversal learning task (PRL) is sometimes used in the context of major depressive disorder (MDD) to assess impairments in cognitive flexibility and feedback sensitivity because behavior in the task is sensitive to pharmacological interventions. Because traditional antidepressants are limited in their effectiveness, new drugs are needed to combat MDD. Ketamine has recently been...
Children with upper respiratory infections (URIs) have an increased risk of respiratory adverse events when undergoing operative anesthesia and in general populations of children receiving procedural sedation. It is unclear if children with URI undergoing emergency department (ED) sedation share the same increased risk. We aimed to determine if the presence of a URI in children undergoing ED...
Introduction: Ketamine is an evidenced-based treatment for depression, and it has shown promise in addressing many other mental health conditions related to work-related stress or burnout, such as anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) is part of an emerging model of psychedelic medicine that employs psychoactive agents to support the psychotherapeutic...
'Tusi', also known as 'tusibí' or 'pink cocaine', is a drug concoction which previously emerged in Latin America and Europe and has recently acquired popularity in the United States (US). Consumers are often unaware that Tusi contains a mixture of ketamine and other drugs, and the concoction can be confused with 2C/2C-B (ring-substituted phenethylamines/4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine) or...
Archives of ToxicologyApril 19, 2025António B Pimpão, Luísa Teixeira-Santos, Nuno R Coelho et al.
We were pioneers in describing aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) activation by chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH) in a rat pre-clinical model. This model mimics hypertension (HTN) secondary to obstructive sleep apnea, enabling longitudinal investigation of hypertension development. Concerns about the influence of barbiturates on AhR-regulated enzymes led us to opt for ketamine/medetomidine...
Subanesthetic ketamine is currently used as a rapid-acting treatment for varied neuropsychiatric disorders. However, the mechanistic underpinnings of its therapeutic action remain unclear, and emerging clinical and preclinical evidence highlights a potential involvement of the opioid system. We used pharmacological functional ultrasound imaging data acquired during and after ketamine...
TrialsApril 17, 2025Arash Mansoori, Amir Bazrafshan, Jamshid Ahmadi et al.4 citations
The concomitant presence of major depressive disorder (MDD) and opioid use disorder (OUD) poses a formidable clinical challenge, warranting effective interventions that address both psychiatric and addictive components. This study sought to compare the efficacy of adjunctive ketamine and buprenorphine in mitigating anxiety symptom severity and craving intensity in individuals with co-occurring...
Objective: Psychedelics are able to trigger highly intense and profound alterations in self-consciousness, perception, affective, and cognitive processes. Indeed, recent studies show that ketamine and psilocybin could be used as fast-acting antidepressants. However, the molecular and neurochemical mechanisms of these psychedelics and their actions at the level of diverse brain structures...
Childhood trauma is a well‐established risk factor for major depressive disorder (MDD) and is often associated with attenuated response to conventional antidepressant therapies. Ketamine has emerged as an effective treatment for treatment‐resistant depression (TRD), but the impact of childhood trauma on its effectiveness remains unclear. Herein, we aimed to determine whether childhood trauma...
JBI evidence synthesisApril 16, 2025Laura Borges Lopes Garcia Leal, Jadson Nilo Pereira Santos, Valquíria Aparecida da Silva et al.
This scoping review will map the available evidence on nursing care provided to adults receiving ketamine infusion for pain management in hospitals and outpatient clinics. The use of intravenous ketamine infusions has increased in various contexts, particularly for pain management as part of a multimodal approach. Although ketamine is associated with a lower risk of hemodynamic disorders and...
Background Postoperative depression (POD) represents a serious complication in surgical patients, exacerbating morbidity and mortality rates while imposing a substantial economic burden on healthcare systems. Despite its widespread clinical use, the role of esketamine, an NMDA receptor antagonist with rapid antidepressant effects, remains understudied in perioperative settings. Therefore, we...
Ketamine is known for its rapid antidepressant effect, but its impact on affective information processing (including attentional bias [AB], a putative cognitive mechanism of depression) remains largely unexplored. We leveraged a novel measurement of AB and sought to 1) establish adequate test-retest reliability and validity among participants with depression prior to ketamine treatment and 2)...
The Journal of ECTApril 15, 2025Erich J Conrad, Zachary F Stielper, Isabelle V Mermilliod et al.
The presence of catatonia refractory to routine pharmacologic management is often subsequently managed by electroconvulsive therapy. However, legal obstacles that delay the initiation of electroconvulsive therapy in a timely fashion may be present. This may lead to prolonged risks associated with immobility and result in other procedures such as percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube...
Remimazolam is a novel benzodiazepine sedative that provides effective sedation, stable haemodynamics, and minimal adverse effects during intravenous general anaesthesia. The aim of this study was to determine the 50% effective dose (ED50) of remimazolam combined with different doses of esketamine for painless gastroscopy and to evaluate the efficacy and safety of this combination. This was a...
Ketamine has emerged as a rapid-acting and robust antidepressant1,2. However, the mechanism of its antidepressant action remains enigmatic. The core issue that has yet to be resolved is whether NMDA receptors (NMDARs), which are subject to open channel blockade by ketamine3,4, mediate the antidepressant effect. NMDARs naturally undergo alternative splicing of the obligatory GluN1 subunit5,...