Simultaneous population pharmacokinetic modelling of ketamine and three major metabolites in patients with treatment‐resistant bipolar depression
British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology February 1, 2012 Xiaochen Zhao, Swarajya Lakshmi Vattem Venkata, Ruin Moaddel et al. 136 citations
Ketamine is metabolized into several compounds, and this study shows that norketamine is not the main metabolite circulating in the blood after a single 40-minute infusion of 0.5 mg/kg ketamine in patients with treatment-resistant bipolar depression. Instead, dehydronorketamine was the major metabolite in four out of nine patients, norketamine in three, and hydroxynorketamine in two. Large inter-patient variation in metabolite levels was observed. The findings suggest that future research on ketamine's effects should measure these downstream metabolites.