Drug Design Development and Therapy
December 1, 2019
Jing Wang, Jie Huang, Shuang Yang et al.
214 citations
A single 0.5 mg/kg dose of esketamine is generally safe and tolerated in Chinese patients undergoing painless gastroscopy. Compared with 1 mg/kg racemic ketamine, esketamine provides a shorter recovery time (9 minutes vs. 13 minutes) and orientation recovery time (11.5 minutes vs. 17 minutes). Adverse event rates were 75.0% for esketamine and 87.5% for racemic ketamine, with dizziness, agitation, nausea, vomiting, headache, and fatigue as main reactions; no serious adverse events occurred. Clearance of esketamine was similar between groups (18.1 and 18.4 mL/min·kg), but in the racemic group esketamine cleared faster than R-ketamine. Gender did not affect pharmacokinetics.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 1, 2021
Dongjiao An, Changwei Wei, Jing Wang et al.
46 citations
Repeated doses of intranasal ketamine produce a fast-acting antidepressant effect in people with major depressive disorder, including those with treatment-resistant depression. In a meta-analysis of six randomized controlled trials totaling 858 participants, depression scores on the Montgomery–Asberg Depression Rating Scale dropped by an average of 6 points at 2–4 hours, 10 points at 24 hours, and 4 points at 28 days. The likelihood of achieving remission was about 3.5 times higher at 24 hours and 1.7 times higher at 28 days compared with placebo. Transient dissociative symptoms and other mild side effects occurred, but no persistent psychosis or mood switches were reported.
CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics
January 10, 2023
Jing Wang, Min Liang, Qing Shang et al.
23 citations
Psilocin, the active metabolite of psilocybin, counteracts methamphetamine (METH)-induced hyperactivity and blocks the formation of conditioned place preference (CPP) in mice, indicating it may reduce the rewarding effects of METH. In an acute model, 1 mg/kg psilocin reduced the elevated activity caused by 2 mg/kg METH. In the CPP model, the same dose of psilocin prevented the development of place preference during acquisition but did not affect extinction or relapse. Molecular analysis revealed that psilocin's effects involve altered expression of dopamine 2 receptor (D2R) and phosphorylated ERK in the prefrontal cortex, nucleus accumbens, and ventral tegmental area. Inhibitors of D2R and ERK phosphorylation also blocked METH-induced hyperactivity and CPP acquisition, suggesting psilocin acts through D2R-mediated regulation of ERK phosphorylation.
Frontiers in pharmacology
January 1, 2025
Jing Wang, Yulei Hao, Di Ma et al.
14 citations
Recreational abuse of six addictive drugs—methamphetamine, cocaine, synthetic cathinones, ketamine, nitrous oxide, and heroin—damages the nervous system through shared toxic pathways, including oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, excitotoxicity, and neuroinflammation. Psychostimulants disrupt monoaminergic signaling, causing cognitive impairment and neurovascular damage. Dissociative anesthetics impair glutamatergic transmission and mitochondrial function, worsening excitotoxicity and neuronal death. Opioids target the brain's reward system, inducing oxidative stress and neuroinflammation. Current treatments focus on symptom management and behavioral therapy; emerging options like antioxidants and NMDA receptor modulators need further validation.
Anesthesiology
May 1, 2024
Zhenhu Liang, Bo Tang, Yu Chang et al.
13 citations
Two new measures of EEG microstate complexity—type I, quantifying randomness, and type II, quantifying fluctuation complexity—track anesthetic-induced unconsciousness independently of the drug used (propofol or esketamine). In 20 patients, type I complexity increased from wakefulness to unconsciousness and decreased upon recovery, while type II complexity showed the opposite pattern. Both measures changed significantly under both anesthetics, suggesting they reflect the state of consciousness rather than the specific drug. These complexity measures may serve as state-related neural correlates of consciousness during general anesthesia.
Pain
September 1, 2024
Yang Zhou, Wanchen Sun, Yuxuan Fu et al.
9 citations
Moderate-to-severe acute postsurgical pain after spinal surgery can slow recovery. A combination of esketamine and pregabalin reduced the incidence of such pain from 60.5% to 27.3% in the first 48 hours after surgery, based on a randomized trial of 90 patients undergoing resection of spinal neoplasms. The odds ratio was 0.25, indicating a substantial benefit. However, mild dissociative symptoms occurred in 18.2% of the combination group versus none in the control group, suggesting the analgesic strategy carries this risk.
Multiple sclerosis and related disorders
November 1, 2025
Yang Yang, Xinyi Duan, Jing Wang et al.
1 citation
Ofatumumab, a fully humanized anti-CD20 antibody, reduced disease activity and disability progression in Chinese patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis. Among 38 treatment-naïve patients, the annualized relapse rate fell from 0.27 to 0.05, and the median disability score dropped from 2.50 to 2.00 after 12 months. Among 59 patients who switched from oral therapies (teriflunomide, siponimod, fingolimod, dimethyl fumarate) due to disease progression, relapse, or MRI activity, the relapse rate decreased from 0.45 to 0.08 and disability scores improved from 2.00 to 1.00. No new MRI lesions, relapses, or serious adverse events occurred in either group.
NeuroImage
July 18, 2025
Xin Wen, Yu Chang, Sijie Li et al.
1 citation
A new measure called Φcopula, which uses a Gaussian copula approach to estimate integrated information, outperforms common estimators by maintaining the lowest bias and mean squared error even in non-Gaussian high-dimensional systems. Applied to electroencephalographic data across awake, propofol-induced unresponsive, and NREM sleep states, alpha-band Φcopula significantly decreased during both anesthesia and sleep. Φcopula-based classifiers distinguished arousal states more accurately than functional connectivity and network efficiency measures. The dorsal attention network and default mode network contributed most to Φcopula, with the cingulate and posterior cortices showing the greatest contributions. The posterior cortex, especially the posterior cingulate cortex, appears critical for arousal-related information integration and consciousness.
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology
June 22, 2026
Qianru Jiang, Jianming Han, Eve Fine et al.
Ketamine, used for treatment-resistant depression and severe pain, acts primarily by blocking the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor, but its therapeutic and abuse-related effects may involve additional targets. Structural evidence shows that ketamine and its analog phencyclidine (PCP) can directly bind to and activate human opioid receptors. The study identifies key molecular motifs involved in this binding and efficacy modulation, and also reveals the structure of the ligand-free state of the κ opioid receptor. Ketamine exhibits more dynamic binding than PCP at the orthosteric site, which may explain its distinct pharmacology. These findings indicate that opioid receptors are important for understanding ketamine's clinical versatility.
Journal of neurosurgical anesthesiology
June 15, 2026
Yi Liang, Wanning Yang, Xinxin Wang et al.
In patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness, a one-hour intravenous infusion of esketamine (0.3 mg/kg/h) altered brain activity as measured by electroencephalography. The drug suppressed delta wave power while increasing beta and gamma wave power across the whole brain, and increased alpha wave power specifically in patients diagnosed as vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome. Signal complexity, measured by Lempel-Ziv complexity, increased in the parietal and occipital brain regions. In minimally conscious patients, this complexity increase persisted for 30 minutes after the infusion stopped, while changes were transient in vegetative state patients. However, these neurophysiological changes were not accompanied by any improvements in behavioral responsiveness as assessed by the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised.
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
May 11, 2026
Jared Plotkin, Elaine Zhu, Mélanie Druart et al.
A single dose of LSD in rats persistently reduces the emotional, or affective, component of pain, without altering basic sensation. This effect is produced by LSD acting directly in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain region that assigns negative value to painful stimuli. Recordings of neural activity showed that LSD suppresses the ACC's responses to painful input, reducing how the brain encodes the unpleasantness of pain. Although LSD increased the intrinsic excitability of ACC neurons in isolated tissue, it paradoxically reduced their maximum firing in response to painful stimuli in living animals. These results suggest that psychedelics can disrupt the brain's transformation of a painful signal into an aversive experience.