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'Special K' Once Again Wows Investigators in Small Depression Study

  • (April 09, 2014)

Yet another research team has pulled off a small study demonstrating the enormous potential of ketamine as a treatment for depression, highlighting again how difficult it has been to push beyond evidence of a rapid-acting treatment to develop a therapy with durable effects. Investigators at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai say that they developed a low-dose, intranasal formulation of the drug that spurred a clear response among a small group of patients suffering from treatment responsive major depression disorder. "One of the primary effects of ketamine in the brain is to block the NMDA [N-methyl-d-aspartate] glutamate receptor," said James W. Murrough, MD, principal investigator of the study, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

-Dr. James W. Murrough, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

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