The drug Ketamine, known in the party scene as "Special K," could have a future in depression treatment.
Pharmaceutical companies are racing to create a patentable version of the drug and researchers are trying to learn more about the effects it has on the brain.
Conventional anti-depressants on the market today take about two weeks to start working; whereas, ketamine takes only about two hours.
Ketamine works by blocking the signalling molecule NMDA, which is a component of the glutamate pathway. This pathway is involved with memory and cognition, psychiatrist James Murrough at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, explained to Nature magazine.
It was completely unknown that this pathway was involved with depression until ketamine was studied.
"It blew the doors off what we thought we knew about depression treatment," Murrough told Nature.
Murrough and his team of researchers published the largest trial of off-label ketamine carried out so far back in 2013.
The study was small, with only 73 participants, but the results were huge. Sixty-four percent of the depressed participants saw a reduction in their condition in 24-hours when they took an off-label ketamine, reported Nature.
A separate study was released last month by a company called Naurex, based in Evanston, Ill. on the effects of a ketamine-like drug, reported Nature.
This study looked at 386 depressed people and had about a 50 percent success rate. The drug also had no hallucinatory side effects.
Murrough told Nature that more long-term studies should be conducted on ketamine before the drug becomes more widespread with treating depression.
