Ketamine Shows Promise for Hard-to-Treat Depression in New Study
A new study suggests that, for some patients, the anesthetic ketamine is a promising alternative to electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, currently one of the quickest and most effective therapies for patients with difficult-to-treat depression. The study is the largest head-to-head comparison of the two treatments.
Patients who don’t respond to at least two antidepressants — about one-third of clinically depressed patients — have a condition that clinicians refer to as “treatment-resistant.” Their options for relief are limited. Doctors typically recommend up to 12 sessions of ECT, which has a long-established efficacy, but is tainted by the stigma of historical misuse and frightening Hollywood images of people strapped to tables, writhing in agony. Today’s ECT is much safer and done under general anesthesia, but the procedure remains underutilized.
The study, published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that ketamine, when administered intravenously, was at least as effective as ECT in patients with treatment-resistant depression who do not have psychosis. (For people with psychosis, ketamine, even in very low doses, can worsen psychosis-like symptoms.)
“The results were very surprising to us,” said Dr. Amit Anand, lead author of the study and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who studies mood disorders at Mass General Brigham. His team had initially hypothesized that ketamine would be nearly as effective as ECT. Instead, Dr. Anand said, they found that ketamine performed even better than that.
Source: The New York Times
