Club drug spray ketamine can stop suicidal thoughts, study finds
Category: News & Politics
Via: badfish-voted-most-popular-member-for-4-years • 8 years ago • 3 comments
An anesthetic that is also used as a ‘club drug’ can help people with dangerously suicidal thoughts, rapidly treating their depression and wish to die, researchers reported Monday.
The hope is to help patients hold on until more traditional antidepressants and therapy have a chance to cikc in, developers said.
The nasal spray showed benefits after four hours, the team at Janssen Research and Development reported in The American Journal of Psychiatry.
But the researchers are also aware that the drug can be abused and are coming up with ways to prevent that.
“They had to be at imminent risk. Not only were they thinking about suicide they were thinking about acting on those thoughts,” Dr. Carla Canuso, a psychiatrist at Janssen parent company Johnson & Johnson, told NBC News.
“Sixty percent of the patients in the study had made an attempt. These were high-risk patients,” she added.
“Half of participants required suicide precautions in addition to hospitalization,” the team wrote.
All the patients got comprehensive care, including counseling and antidepressants. Half also got the nasal spray, called esketamine, and half got a saline placebo.
Within four hours, 34 percent of the patients given esketamine lost their immediate thoughts of suicide, saying they ‘enjoy life or take it as it comes’, compared to 23 percent who got placebo, Canuso’s team found.
At the same time, 55 percent of those on who got a placebo still said they were “probably better off dead”, compared to 26 percent who got esketamine.
The patients got esketamine spray or placebo twice a week for four weeks, plus standard treatment.
After 25 days, 77 percent of the patients given esketamine said they ‘enjoy life or take it as it comes’, compared to 58 percent of those who got placebo, the researchers said.
The four weeks of treatment was deliberate, Canuso said.
“That is the period of time it normally takes a standard antidepressant to kick in,” she said.
The effects wear off over time. “The failure to demonstrate longer-term benefits raises questions about the risk versus the benefit of long-term use,” noted Dr. Robert Freedman, who edits the American Journal of Psychiatry.
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Dear Friend Badfish: Interesting.
Please keep us posted as developments unfold.
Peace and Abundant Blessings Always.
Enoch.