Is There Really Nothing New Under the Sun? Is Low-Dose Ketamine a Fast-Acting Antidepressant Simply Because It Is An Opioid?

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

8 citing papers in PubMed.

1. Antidepressant efficacy of ketamine plus naltrexone for major depression comorbid with alcohol use disorder: a randomized controlled trial.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2025
   Trial
2. Association of Combined Naltrexone and Ketamine With Depressive Symptoms in a Case series of Patients With Depression and Alcohol Use Disorder.JAMA psychiatry · 2019
   Trial
3. Pharmacological Mechanism of Ketamine in Suicidal Behavior Based on Animal Models of Aggressiveness and Impulsivity: A Narrative Review.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023
   Review
4. "Esketamine" in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Look Beyond Suicidality.Cureus · 2022
   Article
5. Mechanisms of ketamine and its metabolites as antidepressants.Biochemical pharmacology · 2022
   Review
6. Synthesizing the Evidence for Ketamine and Esketamine in Treatment-Resistant Depression: An International Expert Opinion on the Available Evidence and Implementation.The American journal of psychiatry · 2021
   Review
7. Overlap in the neural circuitry and molecular mechanisms underlying ketamine abuse and its use as an antidepressant.Behavioural brain research · 2020
   Review
8. Opioid system is necessary but not sufficient for antidepressive actions of ketamine in rodents.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020
   Article

Corrections and comments

• Comment on
  Attenuation of Antidepressant Effects of Ketamine by Opioid Receptor Antagonism.2018

Authors and funding

1 author.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

Abstract

PubMed holds no abstract for this paper.

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