Ketamine makes children blithely unaware of pain during difficult medical procedures. But it has another remarkable quality: When given intravenously at a lower dose than is used for anesthesia, ketamine acts as a powerful and fast-acting antidepressant for adults.
But suicidal patients can't wait that long: for them, finding a speedy and effective treatment could make the difference between life and death.
Ketamine's not an ideal medication, even as a rescue drug for depression: It has to be given intravenously and sometimes causes short-term psychotic symptoms. But unlocking the mystery of how it works could help point the way to other drugs and alternative approaches to treating depression, stat.
In a letter published this week in the journal Nature, a trio of researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center report on experiments with mice that suggest ketamine works by causing a surge in the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
If production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor could be dialed up by ketamine or other drugs that work like it, the result might not only provide fast relief from depressive symptoms: such drugs might help the brain protect and regenerate itself when under attack from a host of degenerative brain diseases, including Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease and Huntington's disease.