Posted by deniseuk190466 on September 18, 2007, at 15:06:09
Speedier Anti-Depressants May Hit The Shelves
A new study has shed more light on how the medication ketamine, when used experimentally for depression, relieves symptoms of the disorder in hours instead of the weeks or months that current antidepressants take to work.
While ketamine itself maybe won't come into use as an antidepressant because of its side effects, the new finding takes scientists significantly closer to understanding how to build up faster-acting antidepressant medications, reports the study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health.An earlier NIMH study in humans had shown that Ketamine blocks a receptor called NMDA on brain cells, but the new study in mice shows that this is a midway step. It turns out that blocking NMDA increases the activity of another receptor, AMPA, and that this boost in AMPA is crucial for ketamine's rapid antidepressant actions.
"Our research is showing us how to develop medications that get at the biological roots of depression. This new finding is a major step toward learning how to improve treatment for the millions of Americans with this debilitating disorder; toward eliminating the weeks of suffering and uncertainty they have to endure while they wait for their medications to work," said NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, M.D.
By aiming new medications at more direct molecular targets, such as NMDA or AMPA, scientists may be able to evade some of the steps through which current antidepressants indirectly apply their effects.
Denise
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