Ketamine is an NMDA receptor (NMDAR) antagonist that elicits rapid antidepressant responses in patients with treatment-resistant depression. However, ketamine can also produce psychotomimetic effects that limit its utility as an antidepressant, raising the question of whether the clinically tolerated NMDAR antagonist memantine possesses antidepressant properties. Despite its similar potency to ...

OBJECTIVES Ketamine abuse can damage the urinary tract and cause lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS). This report presents our observations and management on urinary tract damage caused by ketamine abuse. METHODS From November 2006 to February 2009, 20 patients visited Taipei Veterans General Hospital due to ketamine-related lower urinary tract symptoms. We analyzed the clinical presentations...

BACKGROUND Acute ketamine has been shown to model features of schizophrenia such as psychotic symptoms, cognitive deficits and smooth pursuit eye movement dysfunction. There have been suggestions that chronic ketamine may also produce an analogue of the disorder. In this study, we investigated the effect of persistent recreational ketamine use on tests of episodic and working memory and on ocul...

PURPOSE Nicorandil opens adenosine triphosphate-sensitive potassium (K(ATP)) channels in the cardiovascular system and is being increasingly used for the treatment of angina pectoris. In the present study, we tested whether intravenous anesthetic agent ketamine affected nicorandil-induced native vascular K(ATP) channel activation. METHODS We used excised inside-out patch clamp configurations ...

BACKGROUND Previous studies suggest that caudal administration of ketamine cause effective analgesia. The purpose of the current study was to compare the clinical effectiveness and plasma concentrations of S(+)-ketamine after caudal or intramuscular administration in children to distinguish between local and systemic analgesia. METHODS After induction of general anesthesia, 42 patients, aged ...

Ketamine, an anesthetic, analgesic, or sedative, is widely used for the treatment of cancer pain. Recently, ketamine has been also reported to be tumor repressor for inhibiting proliferation, invasion, and migration, and inducing apoptosis in many cancers. However, whether ketamine can induce the apoptosis of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and which downstream molecular mediates its function remain...

The effect of co-administration of ketamine at the sub-effective dose with diazepam, chlordiazepoxide and clonazepam on their antinociceptive and protective efficacy against pentetrazole-induced seizures were studied in mice. Ketamine alone produces dose-dependent antinociception manifested as reduction in the number of writhing episodes evoked by acetic acid. In the writhing test, the antinoci...

Over the last couple of years, there have been numerous studies investigating the efficacy of ketamine, a non-competitive N-methyl-d-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptor antagonist as a rapid antidepressant. Most of the existing published literature describes the purported effectiveness of ketamine as a rapid antidepressant. The clinical efficacy of intravenous ketamine in the reduction of suicidal id...

Corresponding author: Soo Kyung Lee, M.D., Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Hallym University Sacred Heart Hospital, 896, Pyeongchon-dong, Dongan-gu, Anyang 431-070, Korea. Tel: 82-31-380-3945, Fax: 82-31-385-3244, E-mail: [email protected] This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http:// creativecom...

T WO factors have increased interest in ketamine for postoperative analgesia. The first was the discovery of the N-Methyl-D-asparrate (NMDA) receptor and its role in central pain processing and spinal cord neural plasticity. 1 Ketamine is one of two clinically useful NMDA receptor antagonists available (the other is dextromethorphan). Ketamine binds non-competitively to the PCI, (phencyclidine)...