Ketamine has a rapid antidepressant effect

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

A common anesthetic, ketamine, has an antidepressant effect lasting for a week.
Most antidepressant medications do not start to relieve the symptoms of depression for several weeks. Now researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health report on an antidepressant with a difference. Ketamine, better known as an anaesthetic, can relieve depression in just hours.

The researchers looked at the effects of ketamine on 12 women and six men with treatment-resistant depression. Those receiving ketamine, rather than placebo, reported an improvement within 110 minutes of an infusion of the drug. The day after, improvement was maintained in 71 per cent and in 35 per cent the effect lasted for a week. No other antidepressant has ever produced such a fast effect. Ketamine targets a different brain pathway from other antidepressants - the glutaminergic pathway. The study looks promising and it is to be hoped the results can be replicated in larger numbers of patients with depression.

Source
Archives of General Psychiatry August 2006 Volume 63 pages 856-864

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