A Promising New Treatment Path

Could future depression treatments involve using an anesthetic that’s also used as a club drug? A study published in the August issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/63/8/856 showed that a single dose of the anesthesia ketamine improved the mood in 71% of the participants who received it, instead of a placebo, within one day. In addition, 35% of the participants still displayed an improvement in mood a week later.

Now, this study is not necessarily exciting because it’s uncovered Ketamine as a potential form of treatment for depression. Ketamine, at least in its current form, would be too problematic as a treatment. For one thing, there is enormous potential for abuse with a drug like this. It’s already in use as a street drug. For another, possible side effects include psychosis. That would be akin to treating your cold by replacing it with the flu.

What’s important about this study is that it points researchers in a new direction. After all, we really don’t at this point know any more about what causes depression than we have in the past, despite the advent of new classes of antidepressants. Those were developed using assumptions, not hard facts, about how our brains work.

The antidepressants we have now are far from perfect. They not only take weeks to take effect, but they are not effective in every case, and finding the right one can be a guessing game.

But this study tells us that there might be another way to treat depression than with the antidepressants we currently have.  It adds to the mounting evidence that a brain chemical called glutamate is involved in depression and can be targeted for treatment. In the past, the focus has been on the brain chemical serotonin, with decidedly imperfect results.

Make no mistake; there is a long way to go between this study and an actual prescription drug that can relieve depression this quickly. But it’s very promising that the beginning of a new path has been found.