Ketamine could be an effective treatment for severe depression (Picture: Getty)
Cheap ketamine injections have been shown to help severely depressed patients when other treatments have failed.
A study in Australia found that one in five patients achieved total remission from their symptoms after a month of twice-weekly injections, and a third said their symptoms improved by at least 50%.
‘For people with treatment-resistant depression – so those who have not benefited from different modes of talk-therapy, commonly prescribed antidepressants, or electroconvulsive therapy – 20 per cent remission is actually quite good,’ said lead researcher Professor Colleen Loo.
The research, led by a team from the University of New South Wales Sydney and the Black Dog Institute, Australia, was a double-blind trial, meaning neither those administering or receiving the injections knew whether they were getting the ketamine or a placebo.Â
‘We found that in this trial, ketamine was clearly better than the placebo – with 20 per cent reporting they no longer had clinical depression compared with only two per cent in the placebo group,’ added Professor Loo.Â
‘This is a huge and very obvious difference and brings definitive evidence to the field which only had past smaller trials that compared ketamine with placebo.’
During the course of a month, 179 participants received two injections a week in a clinic, where they were monitored for around two hours while any acute dissociative or sedative effects wore off.
Unlike previous studies, the placebo was a mild sedative, midazolam, to improve treatment masking – if only saline was used, participants may have guessed they were given the placebo due to the lack of any side effects after administration.
‘Because there are no subjective effects from the saline, in previous studies it became obvious which people were receiving the ketamine and which people received placebo,’ said Professor Loo.
‘In using midazolam – which is not a treatment for depression, but does make you feel a bit woozy and out of it – you have much less chance of knowing whether you have received ketamine, which has similar acute effects.’
The study, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, asked participants to assess their mood at the end of the trial and one month later.
In a second departure from previous studies, the trial included those who had previously received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
‘People are recommended ECT treatment for their depression when all other treatments have been ineffective,’ said Professor Loo.
‘Most studies exclude people who have had ECT because it is very hard for a new treatment to work where ECT has not.’
Ketamine has previously been available to treat depression in Australia, but in a much more expensive form known as S-ketamine, costing A$800 (£420) per dose.
However, the generic ketamine used in the trial cost just A$5 (£2.60) per dose.
Elon Musk said last month he has used ketamine to treat depression (Picture: Reuters)
‘With the S-ketamine nasal spray, you are out of pocket by about A$1,200 for every treatment by the time you pay for the drug and the procedure, whereas for generic ketamine, you’re paying around $300-350 for the treatment including the drug cost,’ said Professor Loo.
The team is applying for the treatment to be made available through Medicare, Australia’s state-funded universal healthcare insurance scheme.
‘If you consider that many of these people might spend many months in hospital, or be unable to work and are often quite suicidal, it’s quite cost effective when you see how incredibly quickly and powerfully it works,’ said Professor Loo.Â
‘We’ve seen people go back to work, or study, or leave hospital because of this treatment in a matter of weeks.’
Ketamine is not approved for medicinal use in the UK.
Last month, Twitter owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed he microdosed with ketamine to help treat depression.