"Ketamine Is Revolutionizing Antidepressant Research, But We Still Don’t Know How It Works" - Michael Torrice
About one-third of people with depression today have treatment-resistant depression. Ketamine is the first drug with a new mechanism to treat depression in more than half a century. “Research at the time indicated that glutamate somehow regulated brain circuits implicated in depression,” said Dennis Charney, MD, the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and president of academic affairs for the Mount Sinai Health System. Dr. Charney compares the experience of watching patients unexpectedly feel better just hours after a dose to the movie Awakenings. In that film, a patient stuck in a catatonic state for decades suddenly wakes up when treated with the drug l-dopa.
—Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, President, Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System