STAT (5/24, Goldhill, Subscription Publication) reports that “when seriously depressed patients don’t respond to antidepressants, the alternatives are limited,” but researchers have “found that ketamine performs at least as well as the current gold standard for such patients, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), suggesting it deserves consideration as a frontline response for people with treatment-resistant depression.” The research was presented at the American Psychiatric Association 2023 Annual Meeting and simultaneously published online May 24 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
MedPage Today (5/24, Monaco) reports, “The open-label trial randomized 403 patients with non-psychotic treatment-resistant major depression to either ketamine or” ECT. Investigators found that “following a 3-week treatment period, 55.4% of the patients in the ketamine group and 41.2% of those in the ECT group had a treatment response, a 14.2% difference…that fell well within the trial’s noninferiority threshold.”
Related Links:
— “Ketamine is comparable to ECT for patients with treatment-resistant depression, study shows ” Olivia Goldhill, STAT, May 24, 2023