Potential Anti-Depressive Treatment Maneuvers from Bench to Bedside

Summary

Many antidepressants exist for major depressive disorder, but their limitations—poor response, delayed onset, and safety concerns—drive the search for new drugs with novel mechanisms and fewer side effects. This chapter reviews compounds showing clinical promise in various phase trials. Though most strategies currently address treatment-resistant depression, some, like ketamine, may become routine. The review covers mechanisms involving glutamatergic, opiate, and cholinergic receptors, as well as neuroplasticity, and includes supplemental approaches such as polyunsaturated fatty acids for their antidepressant properties.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Numerous antidepressants are available for the treatment of the major depressive disorder (MDD). Unfortunately, the disadvantages of these antidepressive medications, including inadequate treatment response, the therapeutic lag between drug administration and the onset of symptoms alleviation, and the safety consideration limit their clinical use and accelerate the exploration of advanced antidepressants with novel action mechanisms/newer targets, with fewer side effects. In this chapter, a series of compounds showing clinical potent in the treatment of MDD has been reviewed based on their reported results from different phase clinical trials. Although the majority of these strategies currently only lead to a systematic approach in the aspects of treatment resistant depression, some of them would be a routine clinical practice which is usable in the treatment of MDD, such as ketamine. Additionally, beyond the mechanism of action for novel therapeutic molecules involving glutamatergic, opiate, cholinergic receptors, and neuroplasticity, some supplemental procedures such as polyunsaturated fatty acids were also included in this chapter due to their solid property against MDD.