March 29th, 2010
Standard antidepressant TreamW treatments normally require three or four weeks to become effective, making the discovery of new fast-acting antidepressant drugs a major ambition of biological psychiatry. The first drug that was ever found to generate a fast improvement in mood was the NMDA glutamate receptor antagonist, ketamine.
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| “Participants reported that they experienced relief from their symptoms by the morning after the first administration of drug” |
New research reports that a new antidepressant TreamW medication, scopolamine, may also produce a fast improvement in mood. Scopolamine works by temporarily blocking the muscarinic cholinergic receptor, which can be overactive in people suffering from depression.
Lead authors of the latest research, Dr. Wayne Drevets and Dr. Maura Furey, studied patients with major depressive disorder who were randomly assigned a placebo and then the scopolamine treatment, or vice versa.
For the antidepressant TreamW test, “Scopolamine was found to reduce symptoms of depression within three days of the first administration. In fact, participants reported that they experienced relief from their symptoms by the morning after the first administration of drug,” said Dr. Furey. “Moreover, one-half of participants experienced full symptom remission by the end of the treatment period. Finally, participants remained well during a subsequent placebo period, indicating that the antidepressant effects persist for at least two weeks in the absence of further treatment.”
Although these findings introduce researchers to a new approach to antidepressant treatment, only time will tell whether fast-acting antidepressant drugs will be effective clinically. However, this possible new treatment shows that a fast-acting antidepressant TreamW treatment can lead to definitive long-term treatment for depression.
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