Tag: ketamine

J&J’s ketamine-derived nasal spray approved by FDA to treat depression

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Johnson & Johnson’s ketamine-derived nasal spray to help millions of U.S. patients suffering from severe depression.

Spravato, approved as a standalone treatment, is “the first and only monotherapy for adults living with major depressive disorder who have had an inadequate response to at least two oral antidepressants,” the pharmaceutical giant said Tuesday. 

An estimated 21 million adults in the U.S. are living with major depressive disorder, one of the most common psychiatric disorders, but one-third of them will not respond to oral antidepressants alone, hindering their quality of life, according to Johnson & Johnson. 

“Treatment-resistant depression can be very complicated, especially for patients who do not respond to oral antidepressants or cannot tolerate them. For too long, healthcare providers have had few options to offer patients much-needed symptom improvement,” Bill Martin, global therapeutic area head of Neuroscience at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, said in a statement. 

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Slow-release ketamine tablets help prevent depression relapses, UK trial finds

Slow-release ketamine pills have been found to prevent relapse into depression, in a trial that could pave the way for a new treatment option for patients with severe illness.

Ketamine is already used as a treatment for depression when conventional antidepressant drugs and therapy have failed. But ketamine is currently only administered intravenously, which requires supervision in a clinic, and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence ruled that a ketamine-like nasal spray should not be available on the NHS.

If the apparent benefits are confirmed in a larger trial, ketamine tablets could be taken at home more cheaply, conveniently and potentially with fewer side-effects, the researchers said.

“We’re seeing a clinically meaningful effect,” said Prof Allan Young, of King’s College London and a co-author of findings. “This is not a definitive result, but the effect size is gratifyingly large.”

The phase 2 trial used an extended-release formulation of ketamine, designed to release the drug into the body over a 10-hour period. The hope was that this would make the treatment more effective and reduce adverse effects such as dissociation, high blood pressure, a racing heart or feelings of numbness. The “slow peak” would also reduce the drug’s abuse potential, Young said.

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Atlanta Could Add Psilocybin And Ketamine To City Workers’ Healthcare Plans Under Pending Resolution

A new proposal from an Atlanta City Council member would direct municipal officials to explore the pros and cons of adding coverage for psilocybin and ketamine as mental health treatments to the city’s healthcare plan for firefighters, police and other government workers.

“Traditional treatments for mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, and others have shown limited effectiveness for some individuals, leading to a need for exploring alternative therapeutic options,” the legislation, which is currently being sponsored by 11 of the Council’s 16 members, states. “Recent research has demonstrated the potential efficacy of alternative therapies such as ketamine-assisted therapy and psilocybin-assisted therapy in treating various mental health conditions, offering promising results where other treatments have failed.”

The resolution’s lead sponsor, Councilmember Liliana Bakhtiari, has said city workers deserve access to a broad range of mental health services.

“We should be offering our employees—and especially our first responders, who are expected to be superhuman—the same amount of grace and providing them with a tool set to essentially overcome this issue,” The lawmaker recently told Axios.

Bakhtiari said the impetus for including the drugs on public employees’ health plans was meeting a West Virginia police officer who witnessed a fellow officer die of suicide and later used ketamine to treat his PTSD. The lawmaker said they’re not aware of any other city governments that have looked into covering psilocybin or ketamine treatment.

The resolution from Bakhtiari would request the Atlanta’s human resources department to “explore the feasibility of adding coverage for ketamine therapy, psilocybin therapy, and other alternative therapies for mental illness in the City’s employee benefits contract during its next round of negotiations.”

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Could KETAMINE be secret weapon in war on cancer? Scientists find illegal party drug can destroy tumours

Ketamine could offer hope in the fight against cancer, scientists believe.

Promising laboratory tests showed the horse tranquiliser-cum-party drug could kill tumour cells.

Experts think it might block a receptor which encourages tumours to grow. 

Although not proven to work on humans, the Imperial College London team hope similar results could be seen in further lab studies and among patients.

In-depth studies involving thousands of cancer patients would be needed before ketamine is ever rolled out as a treatment, however, meaning any development is still years away at best.

Ketamine is only licensed in the UK as an anaesthetic but can also be prescribed off-license as a pain killer.

These versions are medical-grade and proven to be safe.  

However, they can still trigger hallucinations, just like the version sold on the streets for as little as £3 a pop. 

Anyone caught in possession of the class B drug faces a five-year prison term and an unlimited fine.

As it stands, surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are the most commonly used cancer treatments.

But researchers around the world are searching for other treatments in a bid to boost care and survival rates, with up to half of people expected to get the disease in their lifetime.

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Mind-altering ketamine becomes new pain treatment, despite little research or regulation

As U.S. doctors scale back their use of opioid painkillers, a new option for hard-to-treat pain is taking root: ketamine, the decades-old surgical drug that is now a trendy psychedelic therapy.

Prescriptions for ketamine have soared in recent years, driven by for-profit clinics and telehealth services offering the medication as a treatment for pain, depression, anxiety and other conditions. The generic drug can be purchased cheaply and prescribed by most physicians and some nurses, regardless of their training.

With limited research on its effectiveness against pain, some experts worry the U.S. may be repeating mistakes that gave rise to the opioid crisis: overprescribing a questionable drug that carries significant safety and abuse risks.

“There’s a paucity of options for pain and so there’s a tendency to just grab the next thing that can make a difference,” said Dr. Padma Gulur, a Duke University pain specialist who is studying ketamine’s use. “A medical journal will publish a few papers saying, ‘Oh, look, this is doing good things,’ and then there’s rampant off-label use, without necessarily the science behind it.”

When Gulur and her colleagues tracked 300 patients receiving ketamine at Duke, more than a third of them reported significant side effects that required professional attention, such as hallucinations, troubling thoughts and visual disturbances.

Ketamine also didn’t result in lower rates of opioid prescribing in the months following treatment, a common goal of therapy, according to Gulur. Her research is under review for medical journal publication.

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Colorado police face trial over death of Elijah McClain

Opening statements were due to begin Wednesday in the first of three trials over the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, a Black man who was not suspected of any crime when Colorado police confronted him, placed him in a choke hold and called paramedics who gave him a sedative overdose.

McClain, 23, was walking home from a convenience store in the Denver suburb of Aurora on Aug. 24, 2019, when he was stopped by police responding to a report he was acting suspiciously.

No Black jurors were among the 12 and two alternates on the panel chosen during a selection process that began Friday. This first trial involves city of Aurora police officer Randy Roedema and former officer Jason Rosenblatt, who are both charged with manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide and other charges.

Both men have pleaded not guilty.

After police restrained McClain in a choke hold, he was injected with the powerful sedative ketamine by paramedics, then lapsed into cardiac arrest and died days later at a hospital. All the police and paramedics involved are white.

The McClain case drew national attention following the 2020 killing of George Floyd under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer, which sparked a summer of global protests over the mistreatment of African Americans and other minorities by U.S. law enforcement.

Local prosecutors at first declined to press charges in McClain’s death. But a public outcry prompted Colorado’s governor to order the state attorney general to review the case. A grand jury charged three police officers and two paramedics in a 32-count indictment in September 2021, two years after the killing.

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Ketamine Therapy Is Now Being Offered Across the US by an Insurance Provider

Ketamine-assisted therapy is now available as a health benefit across the U.S.

Enthea, a benefits company focused on providing insurance coverage for psychedelic treatments, announced it is offering ketamine-assisted therapy to its benefit plans nationwide. The company already has ketamine-assisted therapy on benefit plans in California, New York, and Texas. 

But the number of Americans receiving this type of treatment as a benefit is limited. Currently only 1,500 people are offered it while the company hopes that number will reach 200,000 by the end of 2024. 

Ketamine is the only psychedelic that can legally be used to treat mental health conditions, and there’s been an influx of clinics offering the drug, sometimes in conjunction with psychotherapy, in the last few years. Sessions range from $300 to $1,500 a session without insurance—usually several sessions are recommended. 

Enthea’s ability to offer ketamine as a benefit nationwide is due to new partnerships with two companies—Skylight Psychedelics and Innerwell—that facilitate psychedelic experiences at clinics around the country, remotely, and in people’s homes, according to a news release. 

Employers looking to offer the benefit to its workers can add it on to existing plans, similarly to dental and vision plans, Enthea said. 

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Abrupt closure of ketamine clinic chain blindsides veterans and others with severe depression and chronic pain

Military veterans across the country are scrambling after more than a dozen clinics that had been providing them with free ketamine treatments for severe depression, chronic pain or post-traumatic stress disorder suddenly closed.

Patients and employees of the Ketamine Wellness Centers, or KWC, said they were blindsided when the company, one of the nation’s largest operators of ketamine clinics, announced on its website on March 10 that it had shuttered all 13 of its locations in nine states.

“I cried for days,” said Travis Zubick, a U.S. Navy veteran, who was a patient at the company’s Minnesota location. “They packed up and left town, and that’s over.”

Zubick and about 50 other former service members had been relying on KWC’s partnership with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for free ketamine treatments.

Now, many are rushing to find another facility that takes their VA insurance before the effects of their last treatment wear off.

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