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Cracking the moody brain: Lifting the mood with ketamine

Nature Medicine volume 16, pages 1384–1385 (2010)Cite this article

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Major depression is one of the most disabling and costly medical illnesses worldwide. Despite the large public health burden, the pace of therapeutic discovery for depression has markedly lagged behind other areas of medicine. Current treatments for depression target mostly components of the serotonin or norepinephrine neurochemical systems and are limited in efficacy, showing also a delayed onset of therapeutic benefit of at least two to four weeks. In contrast, studies showing a rapid-onset antidepressant effect for the anesthetic agent ketamine—a glutamate N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist—even in people with treatment-resistant depression (TRD), have engendered a new wave of clinical and basic science research focused on the glutamate system and the NMDA receptor complex in mechanisms of depression and its treatment.

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Figure 1: The rapid-acting antidepressant effects of ketamine and the potential role of synaptogenic and neurotrophic mechanisms in depression.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. James W. Murrough is in the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA.,

    James W Murrough

  2. Dennis S. Charney is at the Office of the Dean, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA.,

    Dennis S Charney

Authors
  1. James W Murrough
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  2. Dennis S Charney
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Correspondence to James W Murrough.

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Competing interests

D.S.C. and Mount Sinai School of Medicine have been named on a use patent of ketamine for the treatment of depression. If ketamine were shown to be effective in the treatment of depression and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for this indication, D.S.C. and Mount Sinai School of Medicine could benefit financially.

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Murrough, J., Charney, D. Cracking the moody brain: Lifting the mood with ketamine. Nat Med 16, 1384–1385 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1210-1384

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