Progress in Neurobiology
December 23, 2015
Rodrigo Machado‐Vieira, Ioline D. Henter, Carlos A. Zarate
Current therapeutic options for major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD) are associated with a lag of onset that can prolong distress and impairment for patients, and their antidepressant efficacy is often limited. All currently approved antidepressant medications for MDD act primarily through monoaminergic mechanisms. Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the...
The American Journal of Emergency Medicine
December 1, 2015
M A Hieger, S R Rose, K L Cumpston et al.
Significant toxicity from amphetamine and cathinone derivatives is being increasingly reported. We describe a series of self-reported exposures to 2-(4-iodo-2,5-dimethoxyphenyl)-N-[(2-methoxyphenyl)methyl]ethanamine (25-I-NBOME or 25-I), a novel amphetamine derivative. Ten patients with an average age of 17 years presented to local emergency departments (EDs) in our community after ingestion...
Adolescent medicine: state of the art reviews
December 1, 2015
W. Eggleston, C. Stork
NMDA receptor antagonists include the prescription medication ketamine, the illicit xenobiotics PCP, MXE, and other novel PCP analogs, and the OTC medication DXM. The NMDA receptor antagonist most commonly abused by adolescents in the United States is DXM. These xenobiotics cause dissociative effects by non-competitively inhibiting the action of glutamate at the NMDA receptor. Additionally,...
Neuropharmacology
November 11, 2015
C. Björkholm, L. Monteggia
How do antidepressants elicit an antidepressant response? Here, we review accumulating evidence that the neurotrophin brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) serves as a transducer, acting as the link between the antidepressant drug and the neuroplastic changes that result in the improvement of the depressive symptoms. Over the last decade several studies have consistently highlighted BDNF as...
Psychopharmacology
November 2015
John Talpos, John Riordan, Joseph Olley et al.
Numerous psychiatric disorders and neurodegenerative diseases have been associated with differences in visual perception, and it has been proposed that the treatment of these differences may represent a novel means to treat disorders like schizophrenia. Unfortunately, few methods exist to study visual perception in pre-clinical species. The purpose of the present study was to adapt a task of...
Clinical Toxicology
November 1, 2015
Matilda Bäckberg, Olof Beck, Anders Helander
3-Methoxy-phencyclidine (3-MeO-PCP) and 4-methoxy-phencyclidine (4-MeO-PCP) are analogs of and drug substitutes for the dissociative substance PCP ("Angel dust"), a recreational drug that was most popular in the 1970s. In Sweden, use of methoxylated PCP analogs was noted starting in mid-2013, according to statistics from the Poisons Information Centre. The objective of this case series was to...
Current behavioral neuroscience reports
October 9, 2015
Minkyung Park, Mark J. Niciu, Carlos A. Zarate
All currently approved antidepressant medications for major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder act primarily on the monoaminergic system and have varying affinities for serotonergic, norepinephrine-ergic, and/or dopaminergic receptors. Unfortunately, these drugs are only effective in approximately two-thirds of patients. Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the...
Drug Testing and Analysis
September 11, 2015
Jason Wallach, Tristan Colestock, Brian Cicali et al.
13 citations
The rise in new psychoactive substances that are available as 'research chemicals' (RCs) remains a significant forensic and legislative challenge. A number of arylcyclohexylamines have attracted attention as RCs and continue to be encountered, including 3-MeO-PCP, 3-MeO-PCE and 3-MeO-PCPr. These compounds are commonly perceived as ketamine-like dissociative substances and are believed to act...
Emergency Medicine News
September 1, 2015
Leon Gussow
Figure: Phenethylamine, top left; 2C-I, top right; and 25I-NBOMe, below.FigureAt least 19 young people died between March 2012 and November 2013 from the so-called N-BOMB drugs, synthetic hallucinogens that can be deadlier than LSD, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Chemist Alexander Shulgin developed a series of hallucinogenic 2C drugs in the early 1970s by adding...
Psychiatry Research
August 30, 2015
Dalena van Heugten-van der Kloet, Timo Giesbrecht, Janelle H. P. van Wel et al.
Some drugs of abuse may produce dissociative symptoms, but this aspect has been understudied. We explored the dissociative potential of three recreational drugs (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), cannabis, and cocaine) during intoxication and compared their effects to literature reports of dissociative states in various samples. Two placebo-controlled studies were conducted. In Study 1...