Could China-led ketamine breakthrough signal hope for millions with depression?
- Researchers say the illegal drug works by suppressing activity in a part of the brain known to become hyperactive during depressive states
The researchers from China and the United States said the use of ketamine was “arguably the most important advance in mental health in decades” and it was important to understand how it worked.
“Given ketamine’s rapid and potent antidepressant activity, a great challenge in neuroscience is to understand its direct brain target(s),” said the team, in a paper published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Science.
Ketamine – which can mitigate depressive symptoms within minutes and have a sustained impact for days – was introduced as an anaesthetic in the 1960s and became widely used as a recreational drug because of its dissociative and hallucinogenic impacts.
The recreational use of ketamine is illegal around the world, including in China. Beijing has submitted multiple petitions to the United Nations urging for the drug to be reclassified as an illicit narcotic, due to rising levels of abuse.
