Repeated Ketamine Infusions May Rapidly Reduce Chronic PTSD Symptoms

Repeated ketamine infusions may lead to rapid symptom improvement in people with chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suggests astudy inAJP in Advance. Participants who received six ketamine infusions over a two-week period experienced greater drops in PTSD symptoms and comorbid depressive symptoms compared with participants who received the sedative midazolam.The findings are “an important next step in our quest to develop novel pharmacologic interventions for this chronic and disabling disorder, as a large number of individuals are not sufficiently helped by currently available treatments,” said lead author Adriana Feder, M.D., of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mou nt Sinai in apress release.The study involved patients aged 18 to 70 with a primary diagnosis of PTSD who had been experiencing symptoms for at least three months and had a score of ≥30 on the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-5 (CAPS-5), indicating symptoms of at least moderate severity. In total, 30 patients were randomly assigned to receive six infusions of either IV ketamine or midazolam (psychoactive placebo control) approximately three times a week for two weeks .The researchers evaluated the study participants using several measures, including the CAPS-5 and the Montgomery- Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), before the first infusion and following the first and second week of infusions. On infusion days, the researchers also evaluated the study participants for potential side ...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: AJP CAPS-5 depression infusion ketamine midazolam Montgomery- Åsberg Depression Rating Scale posttraumatic stress disorder PTSD Source Type: research