Journal of Affective Disorders
August 1, 2026
Ching-Hua Julie Lee, Yunzhe Qian, Weiqun Yu et al.
This study evaluated the long-term comparative effectiveness and safety of esketamine versus injectable ketamine and esketamine versus oral antidepressants for major depressive disorder (MDD). This emulated target trial utilized observational data from a cohort of U.S. adults with MDD between 2018 and 2024. Patients were categorized into those receiving esketamine, injectable R,S-ketamine, and...
Journal of Affective Disorders
August 1, 2026
João Paulo Atidio, Rodrigo Simonini Delfino, Igor Saque Garios et al.
Ketamine and esketamine have been increasingly used as adjunctive treatments for treatment-resistant depression (TRD), yet evidence on pharmacological interactions with commonly prescribed psychotropic medications remains limited. This study evaluated the association between concomitant lamotrigine, lithium, and benzodiazepine use and antidepressant outcomes during subcutaneous esketamine...
Journal of Pain and Symptom Management
August 1, 2026
Paul Noufi, Joshua B Borris, Danielle Chammas et al.
Patients with serious illnesses and short prognoses often experience depression and suicidal ideation. Traditional antidepressants are limited by delayed onset, creating a need for rapidly acting therapies. In this Palliative Care Rounds, we examine the evidence for ketamine/esketamine's efficacy as antidepressants, including evidence specific to people with serious illnesses. In psychiatric...
Psychiatry Research
August 1, 2026
Pietro Carmellini, Andrea Fagiolini, Mario Pinzi et al.
Intravenous ketamine has emerged as a rapid-acting antidepressant intervention that has shown promising effects in patients with treatment-resistant depression, although evidence remains heterogeneous and less well established across diagnostic subtypes. Nevertheless, real-world data comparing diagnostic subtypes and sex-related differences remain limited. This observational study examined the...
Journal of Pain and Symptom Management
August 1, 2026
Stefan Aguiar, Mary Makarious, Orly Lipsitz et al.
Depression and existential distress are highly prevalent among patients with advanced cancer, and there is growing evidence for ketamine as a rapidly acting antidepressant in the population, but few studies have examined existential distress outcomes with ketamine treatment. The INKeD-PC trial demonstrated efficacy of intranasal racemic ketamine for depression in patients with cancer receiving...
Psychiatry Research Neuroimaging
August 1, 2026
Kengo Yonezawa, Shinichiro Nakajima, Shuhei Shibukawa et al.
Ketamine may alleviate treatment-resistant depression (TRD) primarily through glutamatergic modulation, with downstream dopaminergic activation. Iron plays an important role in monoaminergic metabolism, that is also implicated in the pathophysiology of TRD. Both Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) and Effective Transverse Relaxation Rate (R2*) mapping can determine the extent of iron...
Journal of Pharmacological Sciences
August 1, 2026
Natsuko Hitora-Imamura, Yuki Nishida, Koki Kawazoe et al.
Animals must balance reward seeking against potential danger, and impairments in such conflict decision-making are common in psychiatric disorders. Here, we examined how chronic corticosterone exposure and ketamine affect conflict behavior in mice by presenting them with a three-compartment conflict task. Three weeks of corticosterone increased conflict levels without inducing anhedonia,...
Current Pharmaceutical Design
July 31, 2026
Prachi Tayal, Rina Das, M.U. Khan et al.
BACKGROUND: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the leading causes of disability globally, and conventional monoaminergic antidepressants often have a slow onset and limited efficacy. About onethird of patients suffer from treatment-resistant depression (TRD), which emphasizes the urgent need for alternative therapies. This review aims to systematically evaluate the available data about...
Journal of Clinical Medicine
July 29, 2026
Psychoactive and Neurobiological Effects of Ketamine in Humans: A Scoping Review of Clinical Evidence.
Western Journal of Emergency Medicine
July 28, 2026
Tatyana Vayngortin, Ekta Patel, Shamilka Seneviratne et al.
Adolescents frequently seek care in the emergency department (ED) for behavioral health emergencies. Due to national shortages in staffing, limited opportunities to begin treatment on site in most centers and, thus, the frequent default to elusive inpatient psychiatric beds as a means of stabilization, adolescents may spend prolonged amounts of time boarding in the ED, often without treatment....