The Washington Post (5/24, Cimons) reports, “A daily multivitamin – an inexpensive, over-the-counter nutritional supplement – may help slow memory loss in people age 60 and older,” according to the findings from “a large nationwide clinical trial” published online ahead of print in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The study revealed that people “taking multivitamins showed an estimated 3.1 fewer years of memory loss compared with a control group who took a placebo.” In other words, “the multivitamin group was an estimated 3.1 years ‘younger’ in terms of their memory function than the placebo group.”

According to the AP (5/24, Aleccia), the study “tracked more than 3,500 people over age 60 for three years.” Participants were randomized “to take a daily multivitamin or a dummy pill,” then were “evaluated annually for three years with internet-based exams that measure memory function.” Investigators also found that memory “improvement was maintained for at least the remaining two years of the study and was more pronounced in people with heart disease.”

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— “The Washington Post (requires login and subscription)

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.”

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— “Ketamine is comparable to ECT for patients with treatment-resistant depression, study shows ” Olivia Goldhill, STAT, May 24, 2023

Medscape (5/24, Brooks, Subscription Publication) reports, “Securing an appointment with a mental health professional in the United States continues to be a challenge, with wait times for an in-person appointment north of two months and over one month for a telepsychiatry visit,” according to a 948-psychiatrist study that “examined general psychiatry outpatient availability during the COVID-19 pandemic in five states – New York, California, North Dakota, Virginia, and Wyoming.” The findings were presented at the American Psychiatric Association 2023 Annual Meeting. Robert Trestman, MD, chair of the APA Council on Healthcare Systems and Financing, said, “There aren’t enough primary care doctors, and there certainly aren’t enough psychiatrists.”

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The Washington Post (5/24, Gilbert) reports, “U.S. authorities have seized increasing quantities of illegal ketamine, according to new research, a trend that coincides with the psychedelic drug’s rising popularity as a treatment for mental health ailments.” In fact, “the number of ketamine seizures by federal, state and local law enforcement in the United States increased from 55 in 2017 to 247 in 2022, while the total weight increased by more than 1,000 percent over that time, according to a” research letter published online May 24 in JAMA Psychiatry. The study’s lead author “sees the trend of seizures as evidence of greater recreational demand for ketamine.”

CNN (5/24, McPhillips) reports, “In addition to the risk of contamination with other potent drugs, using ketamine without medical supervision could lead to adverse outcomes, experts” contend. Gerard Sanacora, MD, PhD, “a psychiatry professor at the Yale School of Medicine,” stated, “Ketamine is possibly the major advance in the area of psychiatry in the past fifty years, but it’s not without risk.” Dr. Sanacora added, “The reality is it is an amazing treatment for many people, but we also know that it is a drug that people misuse and will abuse. And if there isn’t tight control on it, you can guarantee that it will find its way into illicit drug use.”

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MedPage Today (5/24, Bankhead) reports, “A measure of environmental stress had a significant association with mortality risk in patients with breast cancer, a large retrospective cohort study showed.” Investigators found that patients with a high “allosteric load” (a cumulative burden of chronic stress from life events) had almost a 50% higher all-cause mortality risk versus patients with a low “allosteric load.” MedPage Today adds, “Stratification of [allosteric load] scores showed that patients in the highest (fourth) quartile had almost an 80% greater risk than those in the lowest (first) quartile.” The findings were published in JAMA Network Open.

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