Treatment Resistant Depression (Pilot)

Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is a major public health problem. Current therapeutic options for this patient population remain limited. With all available treatments, only a subset of those patients who achieve an antidepressant response is likely to achieve treatment-induced remission.

The need for antidepressant medication that can provide both rapid and long-lasting relief of TRD symptoms is widely recognized. There is new evidence that drugs that block NMDA glutamate receptors (NMDA antagonists) are promising candidates for meeting this need.

Existing studies in TRD have used only a low-dose, brief infusion of ketamine that would not be expected to re-sensitize the NMDA receptor; in agreement with this theory, these prior studies have found only temporary improvements of depression. Our key hypothesis is that a higher-dose, longer-term ketamine infusion, such as that used in chronic pain studies, would provide a more robust and lasting improvement from depression.

Topic Treatment-Resistant Depression
Compound Placebo Ketamine
Country United States of America
Visit trial

Trial Details



Trial Number

Sponsors & Collaborators

West Virginia University
Research into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics is underway at West Virginia University.

Measures Used

Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale
A ten-item diagnostic questionnaire used to measure the severity of depressive symptoms in patients with mood disorders.

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.