A study of patients with treatment-resistant depression found that four infusions of the antidepressant ketamine improved cognitive function for five weeks. These improvements appeared to be independent of antidepressant response. This study Affective Disorders Journal.
Depression is a mental health disorder characterized by persistent sadness, feelings of hopelessness, and lack of interest or enjoyment in activities. It negatively affects many aspects of daily life, including sleep, appetite, and concentration. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 322 million people worldwide suffer from depression.
Typical treatments include a combination of therapy, medications, and lifestyle changes. However, for about 30% of people, symptoms of depression persist even after two or three treatments. These people are thought to have treatment-resistant depression. Statistics show that their risk of disability and suicide is significantly higher than that of patients with treatable forms of depression. Therefore, finding ways to deal with treatment-resistant depression is a topic of great scientific interest.
One promising new treatment for treatment-resistant depression is ketamine. Ketamine is widely used in medicine as an anesthetic and analgesic, but recent studies have shown that when ketamine is administered at certain doses below that required for its anesthetic effect, 60% to 70% of patients become treatment-resistant. % of depression symptoms have been shown to be reduced. depression. Other studies have shown that it may also affect cognitive impairment, which is one of the core symptoms of depression.
Study author Artemis Zavariangos-Petropoulou and colleagues investigated whether infusions of ketamine at doses lower than those needed to produce an anesthetic effect would positively impact cognitive function in patients with treatment-resistant depression. I thought I would consider it. They were particularly interested in executive function, inhibitory control and attention, language processing, and episodic and working memory.
The study included 66 adult participants who had experienced a depressive episode that had not responded to at least two antidepressant treatments. Eligible participants were between 20 and 64 years old, diagnosed with unipolar or bipolar depression, and had moderate or severe depressive symptoms at the start of the study.
Participants received a 0.5 mg/kg ketamine infusion diluted in 60 cm3 of saline intravenously over 40 minutes. Each participant received four infusions over a 14-day period. They completed the NIHToolbox Cognition Battery neurocognitive assessment 24 hours after the first and his fourth infusion, and 5 weeks after the last infusion.
Results showed that participants’ working memory, processing speed, episodic memory, and overall neurocognitive test performance improved after four ketamine infusions. There was also some improvement in language, attention, and inhibition. Remarkably, improvements in overall neurocognitive performance and specific functions persisted for 5 weeks after treatment.
The severity of depressive symptoms also decreased after four ketamine treatments, but began to increase again by five weeks post-treatment.
“We demonstrated the cognitive safety and cognitive-enhancing effects of continuous ketamine treatment lasting 5 weeks after the completion of four consecutive infusion treatments,” the study authors concluded. “Furthermore, we found that the brain processes that lead to improved inhibition are related to the processes that lead to a successful antidepressant response after ketamine treatment. In contrast, processing speed, episodic memory, and episodic memory during the treatment period were Improvements in other neurocognitive functions such as , working memory, and attention occurred independently of changes in depressive symptoms.
This study provides a valuable contribution to the scientific understanding of ketamine’s antidepressant effects. However, there are also limitations that need to be considered. Of note, this study did not include a control group and participants were aware of the characteristics of the treatment they were receiving. The researchers note that participants were not instructed to expect changes in cognitive function, but the study design nevertheless does not allow for clear causal conclusions to be drawn from the results. Not yet.
Additionally, participants completed the same battery of tests across multiple assessments, and the observed effects (at least in part) may be a result of practice rather than treatment. The lack of a control group makes it impossible to distinguish between these two possibilities.
paper, “Neurocognitive effects of continuous ketamine infusion under anesthesia in treatment-resistant depression” is written by Artemis Zavariangos-Petropoulos, Sean M. McClintock, Jacqueline Khalil, Shantanu H. Joshi, Brandon Tarak, Noor B. Alsharif, Randall T. Espinoza, and Katherine L. Na It is.
