Ketamine Depression Treatment
Ketamine is a safe medication that has been widely used for decades since 1970s as an anesthetic in both children and adults.
Not unlike other anesthetics, ketamine has been used illegally for recreational use. Abuse of ketamine can be very dangerous and potentially lethal, as is the case with alcohol and narcotic medications.
That said, when used responsibility by trained clinicians, ketamine can be an extremely valuable option with a wide safety margin to treat a diverse range of conditions, including depression, anxiety, PTSD, trauma, OCD, pain, and suicidal ideation. In fact, the doses used for treatment of psychiatric and mental disorders are well below what is generally used for surgical procedures to anesthetize a patient.
How does Ketamine work?
Biochemically, ketamine interacts with the NMDA receptor to produce anesthetic effects. It interacts with DA receptors to reduce dopamine deficiency in brain circuits involving the hippocampus and other brain nuclei. Addition, it interacts with the AMPA receptor to produce antidepressant effects.
Although the specific mechanism of action of ketamine is still not fully understood by scientists and researchers, it is collectively believed ketamine targets gene expression and protein manufacture in certain important brain pathways or circuits, rather than directly targeting neurotransmitters. It rapidly activates a biochemical pathway associated with synaptic plasticity, the mTOR pathway, by increasing expression of a gene encoding the protein BDNF, which gets the m-TOR pathway going. Hence, activation of this pathway leads to increased number of new synapses in targeted brain regions leading to global restoration of brain synapses, both structurally and functionally, that may have been damaged by a chronically ill brain.
Ketamine infusion is an OFF-LABEL treatment solution. Hence, ketamine infusion treatment is not covered by insurance.
< For more detailed information about Spravato and how it works, you can visit the FDA’s official page on Spravato.
