320 SHARES Share Tweet

The FDA put experimental drug ketamine on track to approval for use to remedy major depression. This breakthrough therapy would provide psychiatrists a new technique for treating people with suicidal tendencies. It would be the newest treatment for major depression in more than half a century.

This potentially efficient medication cannot escape its reputation as the street drug Special K known for giving a high and used sometimes for date rape.

Ketamine was initially synthesized in the year 1962 by Calvin Stevens, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. The drug received an FDA approval for human use in 1970, and shortly after that period, Army doctors used it on American soldiers who fought in Vietnam as a sedative and analgesic. Yet its minor hallucinogenic adverse effects soon stopped doctors from using it to treat people. Today, ketamine is mostly used as a veterinary anesthetic.

Despite its effect on humans ketamine has is honored on the WHO’s Essential Medicine List mainly as an anesthetic and is used off-label for post-traumatic stress disorder, pain, anxiety, and depression. A recent study has looked at ketamine’s effects on obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Depression causes damage to the nerves and its transmission pathways. Researchers believe (following several animal studies), that ketamine remodels the nerves. It triggers a neuroplastic process, which creates new connections in brain cells.

While current oral antidepressants take up to 4 to 6 weeks to work, ketamine takes effect within four hours. The effects of ketamine are dramatic and long-lasting, with patients experiencing excellent results for more than 30 days following a single dose.

Since suicide has now become a silent epidemic, the question is will ketamine’s bad name prevent it from acting as a much-needed remedy for depression?