Action of Ketamine in Treatment-Resistant Depression

Depression carries the largest burden of all medical disorders in middle to high income countries, as determined by the World Health Organization. Despite many antidepressant strategies, only a third of patients get well after their first treatment and a third remain ill after several treatments. Moreover, antidepressant treatments all have a delayed action ranging up to several weeks.

Ketamine (KET) has been used for decades as a sedative and anesthetic. In treatment-resistant depressed patients (TRD), an intravenous dose much lower than necessary for anesthesia may produce a robust antidepressant effect and may even abolish suicidal thoughts within hours, peaking within 24 hours.

The current study compares KET against a short-acting sedative. The phases of this study compare response to a single KET injection to 6 injections over 2 weeks. Next, KET responders are given 1 injection a week for 3 weeks of either KET or the sedative agent to determine if beneficial effects of KET are maintained, and to assess duration of its benefits after repeated administration.

Topic Treatment-Resistant Depression Depression
Compound Ketamine Placebo
Country Canada
Visit trial

Trial Details



Trial Number

Sponsors & Collaborators

University of Oxford
This company doesn't have a full profile yet, it is linked to a clinical trial.

Johnson & Johnson
One of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, Johnson & Johnson are responsible for bringing esketamine to market in the form of Spravato.

Data attribution

A large set of the trials in our database are sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov (CTG). We have modified these post to display the information in a more clear format or to correct spelling mistakes. Our database in actively updated and may show a different status (e.g. completed) if we have knowledge of this update (e.g. a published paper on the study) which isn't reflected yet on CTG. If a trial is not sourced from CTG, this is indicated on this page and you can follow the link to the alternative source of information.