Research is mounting that the hallucinogenic club drug called ketamine, or Special K, eases severe depression in people who haven't responded to conventional antidepressants, such as Prozac and Lexapro.
In addition to providing relief, ketamine appears to work in hours, as opposed to pharmaceutical antidepressants which usually take weeks.
Ketamine, which is most widely known as a party drug, has been used for decades as an anesthetic, says an article in the New York Times. Even though small studies done at prestigious medical center such as Yale University, Mount Sinai, and the U.K.'s University of Oxford have shown positive results at relieving resistant depression, some psychiatrists say the drug needs to be studied more before being used outside of clinical trials.
"We don’t know what the long-term side effects of this are," Dr. Anthony J. Rothschild, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, told the New York Times.
Known side effects include raised blood pressure and heart rate, a decrease in brain function, and bladder problems.
Another problem of using ketamine is it has side effects described by some patients as out-of-body experiences. Pharmaceutical companies have been trying to develop drugs that work similar to ketamine, but without the disturbing side effects.
On Tuesday, the drug company Naurex released the results of a new mid-stage study. They found that their drug called GLYX-13 relieved depression in about half of the 400 patients who participated without causing psychotic side effects.
GLYX-13 is administered by intravenous injection every week or every two weeks, but the company is working on an oral version. Other companies are also in trials of ketamine-like drugs. The company Cerecor is testing a daily pill, and Johnson & Johnson is testing a nasal spray.
Some doctors are already using ketamine off-label, charging from $300 to more than $1,000 for a single treatment. In these cases, the drug is not covered by insurance.
To read the entire New York Times article, go here.
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