Virtually all antidepressant agents increase the birth of granule neurons in the adult dentate gyrus in rodents, providing a key basis for the neurogenesis hypothesis of antidepressant action. The novel antidepressant ketamine, however, shows antidepressant activity in humans within hours, far too rapid for a mechanism involving neuronal birth. Ketamine could potentially act more rapidly by enh...

BACKGROUND Post-operative pain management is usually limited by adverse effects such as nausea and vomiting. Adjuvant treatment with an inexpensive opioid-sparing drug such as ketamine may be of value in giving better analgesia with fewer adverse effects. The objective of this systematic review was to evaluate the effectiveness and tolerability of ketamine administered peri-operatively in the t...

Poorly controlled pain may lead to increased risk of cancer metastasis by suppressing natural killer (NK) cell activity. Ketamine may be beneficial by potentiating opioid-induced analgesia. We enrolled 59 participants in a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial and assigned them to receive propofol plus (1) saline, 2 mL; (2) ketamine, 0.5 mg/kg; or (3) ketamine, 1.2 mg/kg, f...

BACKGROUND Ketamine increases both blood pressure and heart rate, effects commonly thought of as sympathoexcitatory. The authors investigated possible central nervous system actions of ketamine to inhibit cardiac parasympathetic neurons in the brainstem by inhibiting multiple nicotinic excitatory mechanisms. METHODS The authors used a novel in vitro approach to study the effect of ketamine on...

INTRODUCTION Ketamine has been used extensively for analgesia and anesthesia in many situations, including disaster surgery where extra personnel and advanced monitoring are not available. There are many features of ketamine that seem to make it an ideal drug for prehospital use. The reported use of ketamine in the prehospital environment is limited, however. The purpose of this study is to rev...

Ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic, produces rapid and sustained antidepressant effects at subanesthtic doses. However, it still inevitably induces psychotomimetic side effects. N,N-dimethylglycine (DMG) is a derivative of the amino acid glycine and is used as a dietary supplement. Recently, DMG has been found acting at glycine binding site of the N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR). As bloc...

Ketamine is a N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) antagonist that produces rapid antidepressant responses in individuals with major depressive disorder. The antidepressant action of ketamine has been linked to blocking NMDAR activation at rest, which inhibits eukaryotic elongation factor 2 kinase leading to desuppression of protein synthesis and synaptic potentiation in the CA1 region of the ...

Ketamine is used as a general anesthetic, and recent data suggest that anesthetics can cause neurodegeneration and/or neuroprotection. The precise mechanisms are not completely understood. This review is to examine the work on ketamine and to address how developmental biology may be utilized when combined with biochemical, pathological, and pharmacokinetic assessments to produce a bridging mode...

Ketamine reduces nociception by binding noncompetitively to the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor, activation of which increases spinal hypersensitivity. We studied 19 healthy, unmedicated male volunteers, aged 20-31 yr. Burn injuries were produced on the medial surface of the dominant calf with a 25 x 50 mm rectangular thermode. On 3 separate days, at least 1 week apart, subjects received a...

BACKGROUND Ketamine is an anesthetic drug. Subanesthetic doses of ketamine have been shown to reduce interleukin-6 concentrations after surgery and to reduce mortality and the production of tumor necrosis factor alpha and interleukin 6 in septic animals. Similarly, adenosine was shown to reduce tumor necrosis factor alpha and mortality of septic animals. The aim of this study was to determine w...