An investigation of amino-acid neurotransmitters as potential predictors of clinical improvement to ketamine in depression
The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology November 1, 2011 Giacomo Salvadore, Jan Willem van der Veen, Yan Zhang et al. 105 citations
Pretreatment levels of certain amino-acid neurotransmitters in the prefrontal cortex predict how well patients with major depressive disorder respond to a single intravenous infusion of ketamine. In fourteen drug-free patients, a lower ratio of glutamine to glutamate in the dorsomedial/dorsal anterolateral prefrontal cortex was associated with greater improvement in depressive symptoms 230 minutes after ketamine administration. Higher glutamate levels in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex correlated with greater improvement in anxiety symptoms. The findings suggest that the presence of reduced glial cells, reflected by the lower glutamine-to-glutamate ratio, may indicate which patients are more likely to benefit from ketamine treatment.