United States: Early exploration suggests a new type of slow- release ketamine lozenge can effectively reduce severe depression without causing the psychedelic goods generally linked to the medicine. Cases taking the loftiest cure of these tablets showed considerable enhancement in their depression compared to those given a placebo.
The lozenge may be a better option for treating depression than ketamine injections and nasal sprays, according to experimenter Colleen Loo, a clinical psychiatrist from the University of New South Wales in Australia.
Effective Treatment without Psychedelic Effects
Esketamine, also known as Spivato, is a ketamine derivative that has been licensed for the treatment of adult treatment-resistant depression in the US. It is available as an injection, nasal spray, or tablet; all forms have psychedelic effects and act rapidly.
According to a university news release, Loo stated, “This is a way of administering ketamine to treat depression that is much easier to give.” This is far more convenient and enables less frequent injections and medical monitoring than needing to visit the clinic once or twice a week for two hours of medical monitoring.
Convenience and Accessibility
According to Loo, extended-release ketamine also doesn’t produce the usual hallucinations connected to the medication. It was previously believed that ketamine’s ability to modify reality and perception contributed to its ability to alleviate sadness, as highlighted by Loo.
According to Loo, “that’s very similar to the psychedelic-assisted therapy model that says that this acute kind of dissociative, altered reality experience is necessary for you to improve,” and that altering your brain circuit functioning in such a profound way gives you new insights that help you break out of your way of thinking.
However, she claimed that the slow-release tablet’s results cast doubt on that idea.
People are still getting better, but Loo explained that “with this tablet form, you don’t experience that because only a tiny amount is released into the bloodstream at a time, with ongoing slow release over days, and you don’t experience the dissociation at all.”
Challenging Previous Assumptions
Researchers used a moderate dosage of the time-release ketamine pill on 231 patients with severe, difficult-to-treat depression as part of this clinical experiment.
According to the results, on day eight, 168 individuals had seen some benefit from the drug, and 132 had improved enough in terms of their depression to be classified as being in remission.
According to Loo, the next stage is to conduct comparable clinical studies with a greater patient population at locations all over the world. The studies may also contrast nasal spray and injectable forms of ketamine with extended-release ketamine.
“Having multiple treatment approaches is very useful because it is also possible that some people may respond to one approach, like the tablet, while others respond to another, like the injection,” Loo said.
Paul Glue, the principal researcher from the University of Otago in New Zealand, is included on a patent for an extended-release ketamine formulation, which was supported by Douglas Pharmaceuticals.