ReviewCNS drugs2012
Ketamine for treatment-resistant unipolar depression: current evidence.
Review in CNS drugs, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 85 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
85 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 239 citations in OpenAlex.
- The application of esketamine in cancer-related depressive states: attention from mechanisms to clinical translation.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- A Promising Route for Established Indications: A Systematic Review of Nebulized Ketamine in Pain.Current pain and headache reports · 2025Pooled it
- Ketamine for mood disorders, anxiety, and suicidality in children and adolescents: a systematic review.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Development of the Ketamine Side Effect Tool (KSET).Journal of affective disorders · 2020Pooled it
- Single-dose infusion ketamine and non-ketamine N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor antagonists for unipolar and bipolar depression: a meta-analysis of efficacy, safety and time trajectories.Psychological medicine · 2016Pooled it
- A causal role of the NMDA receptor in recurrent processing during perceptual integration.eLife · 2025Trial
- A Randomized Double-Blind Placebo-Controlled Trial of Combined Escitalopram and Memantine for Older Adults With Major Depression and Subjective Memory Complaints.The American journal of geriatric psychiatry : official journal of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry · 2020Trial
- Ketamine augmentation for major depressive disorder and suicidal ideation: Preliminary experience in an inpatient psychiatry setting.Journal of affective disorders · 2018Trial
- Factors Influencing the Cardiovascular Response to Subanesthetic Ketamine: A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2017Trial
- Ketamine rapidly relieves acute suicidal ideation in cancer patients: a randomized controlled clinical trial.Oncotarget · 2017Trial
- The effects of low-dose ketamine on the prefrontal cortex and amygdala in treatment-resistant depression: A randomized controlled study.Human brain mapping · 2016Trial
- A randomized controlled trial of intranasal ketamine in major depressive disorder.Biological psychiatry · 2014Trial
- The effects of subanesthetic ketamine infusions on motivation to quit and cue-induced craving in cocaine-dependent research volunteers.Biological psychiatry · 2014Trial
- Therapeutic infusions of ketamine: do the psychoactive effects matter?Drug and alcohol dependence · 2014Trial
- Plasma brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and response to ketamine in treatment-resistant depression.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2014Trial
- Antidepressant efficacy of ketamine in treatment-resistant major depression: a two-site randomized controlled trial.The American journal of psychiatry · 2013Trial
- A Blueprint for Implementing Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy in Palliative Care: Design, Process, and Treatment Patterns of a Real-World Clinical Program.Journal of palliative medicine · 2026Article
- Review
- Ketamine effects on resting state functional brain connectivity in major depressive disorder patients: a hypothesis-driven analysis based on a network model of depression.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- The Psychedelic Future of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Treatment.Current neuropharmacology · 2024Review
25 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Currently available drugs for unipolar major depressive disorder (MDD), which target monoaminergic systems, have a delayed onset of action and significant limitations in efficacy. Antidepressants with primary pharmacological targets outside the monoamine system may offer the potential for more rapid activity with improved therapeutic benefit. The glutamate system has been scrutinized as a target for antidepressant drug discovery. The purpose of this article is to review emerging literature on the potential rapid-onset antidepressant properties of the glutamate NMDA receptor antagonist ketamine, an established anaesthetic agent. The pharmacology of ketamine and its enantiomer S-ketamine is reviewed, followed by examples of its clinical application in chronic, refractory pain conditions, which are commonly co-morbid with depression. The first generation of studies in patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD) reported the safety and acute efficacy of a single subanaesthetic dose (0.5 mg/kg) of intravenous ketamine. A second generation of ketamine studies is focused on testing alternate routes of drug delivery, identifying methods to prevent relapse following resolution of depressive symptoms and understanding the neural basis for the putative antidepressant actions of ketamine. In addition to traditional depression rating endpoints, ongoing research is examining the impact of ketamine on neurocognition. Although the first clinical report in MDD was published in 2000, there is a paucity of adequately controlled double-blind trials, and limited clinical experience outside of research settings. Given the potential risks of ketamine, safety considerations will ultimately determine whether this old drug is successfully repositioned as a new therapy for TRD.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.