new Rx for treatment-resistant depression

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In small doses ketamine is a potent antidepressant, psychiatrist Dennis Charney and a team at Yale University reported in 2000. In a small study, the compound was especially helpful for people with treatment-resistant depression for which therapy and drugs don't work. Ketamine brought relief almost immediately, and at the low doses Charney used, it caused only mild to moderate dissociation and no major delusions.

Charney, now dean of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, thinks ketamine could serve as an alternative to electroconvulsive therapy, the current treatment of last resort. He envisions patients receiving a series of ketamine injections that would keep them depression-free for a month or more. During that window of opportunity, other drugs and therapies would be introduced to ward off relapse, perhaps aided by an occasional ketamine booster.

In a small study published last year, a single ketamine injection dramatically lifted patients’ depression within 24 hours. After multiple doses over two weeks, 9 of 10 patients showed significant improvement. One remained stable for more than three months. “It’s pretty amazing to these patients,” says Rebecca Price, a graduate psychology student at Rutgers University and lead author of the study. “They can’t even remember not being depressed—and then they get this little respite.” Charney says it will take at least several years to conduct enough large, controlled studies for federal drug approval.

In olden times they used to treat depression with these:

http://lifestylepetandproducesupplies.c ... ittens.jpg

Large doses are fun too.

Not saying it's untrue, but I'd suspect the miraculous results won't scale as dramatically at 90% to larger groups of people. I had ketamaine prescribed for CFS/fibro stuff years ago and it was sorta helpful, but was nothing dramatic. I remember other people getting ketamine IV's in higher doses jn the doc's office, and they seemed (and said themselves they were) a little intoxicated, like after 2-3 beers.

But I've been 'through the mill' with anti-depressants and never had much luck, so I'm a bit biased toward cynicism about that.

I wish my psychiatrist prescribed me kittens.

I need 10 CC of kittens, stat!

Would you like them orally or intravenously?

10 CCs of kitten isn't nearly enough for a whole kitten!

I need puppies too.

if some smart techie person could distill the warm fuzzie essense of kitten and puppie and dolly and such, and make a potion, i'd be the first in line to get a dose.
ketamine [aka "special K"] has one distinctive side effect, and that is disinhibition. when i worked in the OR it was one drug in the anesthetist's arsenal, and the adult patients who were given ketamine without exception became distinctly saucy in their behavior and speech. but children just became spacey. i don't know what caused that difference in effect between children and adults.

Moog, you would have won some extra style points if you quoted Hunter S. Thompson there.

That being said it amazes me that this sort of sh*t is new to the clinical world.

Do they still need guinea pigs?

I always felt mushrooms in a controlled enviroment once every month or two could take the place of just about all head meds.