Diseases
November 3, 2023
Kainat Riaz, Sejal Suneel, Mohammad Hamza Bin Abdul Malik et al.
16 citations
Half of patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) do not respond to traditional therapies. A review of six phase II randomized controlled trials indicates that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy can reduce PTSD symptoms even in treatment-resistant cases. MDMA appears to work by increasing neurohormones such as dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and oxytocin, and by modulating brain regions involved in fear and anxiety. The FDA has granted MDMA-assisted psychotherapy a "breakthrough therapy" designation. Further research is needed to determine whether the benefits outweigh the risks and how it might fit into existing PTSD treatment options.
Journal of Psychoactive Drugs
February 9, 2019
Lorenzo Moccia, A. Tofani, Marianna Mazza et al.
10 citations
A 23-year-old man developed a substance-induced psychotic disorder after intravenously injecting an unspecified amount of methoxetamine (MXE), a ketamine derivative hallucinogen. Clinically, he showed blunted affect, diminished social drive, loss of sense of purpose, and detachment from the environment. Psychometric tests revealed severe dissociation, lack of motivation, and mild impairments in verbal fluency, working memory, and attention. Brain scans using 18F-FDG PET/CT showed significantly reduced tracer uptake in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a region critical for goal-oriented cognition, working memory, and attention. This case indicates that a single acute MXE intoxication can cause severe brain impairment.
Expert opinion on pharmacotherapy
March 1, 2024
Georgios D Kotzalidis, Federica Fiaschè, Alessandro Alcibiade et al.
3 citations
Suicidal behavior is common among people with bipolar disorder and is the leading cause of death in this group, with rates remaining high despite standard treatments like lithium, antidepressants, and psychotherapy. A review of PubMed identified few studies on acute suicidality and lithium or clozapine, but 14 studies on ketamine, esketamine, or glutamate-related treatments. Glutamatergic abnormalities are present in both bipolar disorder and suicide. The NMDA antagonist ketamine and its S-enantiomer esketamine appear to decrease acute suicidality, possibly by rapidly remodeling glutamate activity. Intranasal esketamine or subcutaneous ketamine, and possibly other glutamate receptor modulators, may improve suicidal behavior in unipolar and bipolar depression, suggesting glutamatergic modulators could reduce acute suicidality and mortality in bipolar disorder.
Preprints.org
Kainat Riaz, Sejal Suneel, Mohammad Hamza Bin Abdul Malik et al.
1 citation
preprint
Half of patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) do not respond to standard pharmacotherapy or psychotherapy. A review of six phase II randomized controlled trials indicates that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy can reduce PTSD symptoms, even in treatment-resistant cases, by increasing neurohormones such as dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and oxytocin and by modulating brain regions involved in fear and anxiety. The FDA has granted MDMA-assisted psychotherapy a "Breakthrough Therapy" designation. Further research is needed to determine whether the benefits outweigh the risks and whether this approach can be integrated into existing treatment options.