Drug Development Research
December 2016
David Feifel
Preclinical Research The surprising results of a small clinical trial on the effects of low dose ketamine, a 65-year old anesthetic drug that is also used off-label for chronic pain and recreationally as a club drug, in eight depressed subjects unleashed the most significant advance in antidepressant drug development in decades. That study and subsequent ones have demonstrated that low dose,...
The Lancet Psychiatry
May 17, 2016
Robin Carhart-Harris, Mark Bolstridge, James Rucker et al.
1,546 citations
BACKGROUND: Psilocybin is a serotonin receptor agonist that occurs naturally in some mushroom species. Recent studies have assessed the therapeutic potential of psilocybin for various conditions, including end-of-life anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and smoking and alcohol dependence, with promising preliminary results. Here, we aimed to investigate the feasibility, safety, and efficacy...
British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology
February 21, 2013
Marieke Niesters, Christian H. Martini, Albert Dahan
498 citations
The anaesthetic ketamine is used to treat various chronic pain syndromes, especially those that have a neuropathic component. Low dose ketamine produces strong analgesia in neuropathic pain states, presumably by inhibition of the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor although other mechanisms are possibly involved, including enhancement of descending inhibition and anti-inflammatory effects at central...
Anesthesiology
August 13, 2012
Marieke Niesters, Najmeh Khalili-Mahani, Christian H. Martini et al.
141 citations
Background The influence of psychoactive drugs on the central nervous system has been investigated with positron emission tomography and task-related functional magnetic resonance imaging. However, it is not known how these drugs affect the intrinsic large-scale interactions of the brain (resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging connectivity). In this study, the effect of low-dose...
Journal of Anesthesia
August 2011
Joon-Ho Lee, Sung-Hwan Cho, Sang-Hyun Kim et al.
We investigated the heat pain threshold (HPT) and temporal summation threshold (TST) before and after target-controlled infusion (TCI) of ketamine with an effect-site concentration (Ce) of 30 and 60 ng/ml. Healthy young volunteers (n = 20) were enrolled. A thermode was applied to the volar side of each volunteer's right forearm, and HPT and TST were measured before and after TCI of ketamine....