Medical breakthroughs in treating depression/anxiety

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First 'gold-standard' trial of ketamine's anti-depressant effects launched

Tuesday 16 August 2016 08.55 BST

The first “gold standard” clinical trial of ketamine for the ongoing treatment of major depression was launched in Sydney on Tuesday and will involve seven research institutions and 200 patients from across Australia and New Zealand.

Several pilot studies have examined the effectiveness of ketamine for depression but these have typically been smaller-scale studies testing a single dose of ketamine on acutely depressed patients.

These trials were necessary to establish whether the drug triggered a response in depressed patients and also to determine effective methods of administering it – for example, intravenously, nasally or subcutaneously.

But no trial has been conducted to see how people respond to ongoing treatment with multiple doses of the drug compared to a placebo until now. The randomised double blind trial, the gold standard for clinical research, means neither the researchers nor patients know whether they will be receiving ketamine or a placebo. The trial will run for three years.

Prof Colleen Loo from the University of New South Wales, who is based at the Black Dog Institute in Sydney, is one of the study’s leaders and has been carrying out research into ketamine for depression more than five years.

“Existing studies show that, if you give a single dose of ketamine to people with serious clinical depression, they do tend to get better – but that only lasts for a few days,” Loo said. “Feeling better for a few days is no good with a chronic disease like depression.

“What we now need to do is establish whether it can be used as an effective ongoing clinical treatment and, if so, who best responds to the treatment and what the treatment guidelines might be.

“It is not good enough to say that just because it has made people feel better in previous trials, when given one dose, that it is a safe and effective treatment long term.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/australi...-on-depression

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Depression’s physical source discovered; potential for new treatments

18th October 2016

Understanding of the physical root of depression has been advanced, thanks to research by the University of Warwick, UK, and Fudan University, China.

The study shows that depression affects the part of the brain which is implicated in non-reward - the lateral orbitofrontal cortex – so that sufferers of the disease feel a sense of loss and disappointment associated with not receiving rewards.

This area of the brain, which becomes active when rewards are not received, is also connected with the part of the brain which is involved in one’s sense of self, thus potentially leading to thoughts of personal loss and low self-esteem.

Depression is also associated with reduced connectivity between the reward brain area in the medial orbitofrontal cortex and memory systems in the brain, which could account for sufferers having a reduced focus on happy memories.

These new discoveries could herald a breakthrough in treating depression, by going to the root cause of the illness, and helping depressed people to stop focussing on negative thoughts.

Read more: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandeve...hysical_source