Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
6 papers
Adjunctive ketamine demonstrated a greater reduction in clinically significant suicidal ideation in depressed patients within 24 hours compared with midazolam, partially independently of antidepressant effect.
Repeated ketamine infusions have cumulative and sustained antidepressant effects. Reductions in depressive symptoms were maintained among responders through once-weekly infusions. These findings provide novel data on efficacious administration strategies for ketamine in patients with treatment-resistant depression. Future studies should further expand on optimizing administration to better translate the use of…
This randomized, double-blind trial tested whether six low-dose ketamine infusions over 12 days worked better than a single ketamine infusion for people with treatment-resistant depression. At 24 hours after the last infusion, there was no significant difference in clinician-rated depression scores between the group that received six ketamine infusions and…
Researchers tested repeated subcutaneous (under-the-skin) injections of racemic ketamine in people whose depression had not improved after at least two antidepressant trials. People got injections twice a week for 4 weeks and neither participants nor the raters knew which drug they were getting. When the study allowed higher, response-guided ketamine…
Twelve children (ages 8–21) with chronic pain received oral ketamine three times a day for 14 days at doses between 0.25 and 1.5 mg/kg per dose to test short-term safety and see if pain improved. Two children at the highest dose (1.5 mg/kg) had dose-limiting side effects (sedation and anorexia),…
(Reprinted with permission from The American Journal of Psychiatry 2019; 176:401-409).
