Trial reportPsychopharmacology2009
The incidence of unpleasant dreams after sub-anaesthetic ketamine.
Trial report in Psychopharmacology, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 71 citations in OpenAlex.
- Ketamine versus etomidate as an induction agent for tracheal intubation in critically ill adults: a Bayesian meta-analysis.Critical care (London, England) · 2024Pooled it
- Respiratory depression in women receiving propofol/esketamine versus propofol/fentanyl for abortion surgery or curettage: a randomized clinical trial.Annals of medicine · 2025Trial
- Longitudinal dream-content shift and void-like dissociative phenomenology around outpatient ketamine infusions in chronic low back pain: a case report.Journal of medical case reports · 2026Article
- The hemodynamics of tracheal intubation in critically ill patients: a narrative review.Journal of intensive care · 2026Review
- Narrative Review: Low-Dose Ketamine for Pain Management.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Review
- The Montreal model: an integrative biomedical-psychedelic approach to ketamine for severe treatment-resistant depression.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Article
- Ketamine plus Alcohol: What We Know and What We Can Expect about This.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Review
- A GlutamateThe Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics · 2021Article
- The Negative Allosteric Modulator EU1794-4 Reduces Single-Channel Conductance and CaMolecular pharmacology · 2021Article
- Repurposing Ketamine in Depression and Related Disorders: Can This Enigmatic Drug Achieve Success?Frontiers in neuroscience · 2021Review
- EEG 40 Hz Coherence Decreases in REM Sleep and Ketamine Model of Psychosis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2018Article
- Paradoxical Emergence: Administration of Subanesthetic Ketamine during Isoflurane Anesthesia Induces Burst Suppression but Accelerates Recovery.Anesthesiology · 2017Article
- Article
- Ketamine for chronic pain: risks and benefits.British journal of clinical pharmacology · 2014Review
- Ketamine: use in anesthesia.CNS neuroscience & therapeutics · 2013Review
- The epidemiology and patterns of acute and chronic toxicity associated with recreational ketamine use.Emerging health threats journal · 2011Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
rationaleKetamine is an N-methyl-D: -aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist with psychotogenic effects and for which there are diverse reports of whether pleasant or unpleasant dreams result during anaesthesia, post-operatively or after sub-anaesthetic use.
objectiveTo assess in healthy volunteers the incidence of unpleasant dreams over the three nights after receiving a sub-anaesthetic dose of ketamine, in comparison to placebo, and with retrospective home nightmare frequency as a covariate.
methodThirty healthy volunteers completed questionnaires about retrospective home dream recall and were then given either ketamine (n = 19, males = 9, mean age = 23.5 years; mean ketamine blood plasma = 175.29 ng/mL) or placebo (n = 11, males = 5, mean age = 25.4 years). Dream recall and pleasantness/unpleasantness of dream content were recorded by questionnaire at home for the three nights after infusion.
resultsKetamine resulted in significantly more mean dream unpleasantness relative to placebo and caused a threefold increase in the odds ratio for the incidence of an unpleasant dream. The number of dreams reported over the three nights did not differ between the groups. The incidence of unpleasant dreams after ketamine use was predicted by retrospectively assessed nightmare frequency at home.
conclusionsKetamine causes unpleasant dreams over the three post-administration nights. This may be evidence of a residual psychotogenic effect that is not found on standard self-report symptomatology measures or a result of disturbed sleep electrophysiology.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.