{"id":35026,"date":"2016-06-10T02:00:31","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T06:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35026"},"modified":"2018-09-17T22:24:38","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T02:24:38","slug":"a-breakthrough-in-our-understanding-of-the-causes-of-depression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/06\/10\/a-breakthrough-in-our-understanding-of-the-causes-of-depression\/","title":{"rendered":"A breakthrough in our understanding of the causes of depression"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott Alexander<\/a> takes a quick look at a recent discovery in medication for depression:<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, Nature<\/em> published a bombshell study showing that ketamine\u2019s antidepressant effects were actually caused by<\/a> a metabolite, 2S,6S;2R,6R-hydroxynorketamine (don\u2019t worry about the name; within ten years it\u2019ll be called JOYVIVA\u2122\u00ae\u00a9 and you\u2019ll catch yourself humming advertising jingles about it in the shower). Unlike ketamine, which is addictive and produces scary dissociative experiences, the metabolite is pretty safe. This is a big deal clinically, because it makes it easier and safer to prescribe to depressed people.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a big deal scientifically. Ketamine is a strong NMDA receptor antagonist; the metabolite is an AMPA agonist \u2013 they have different mechanisms of action. Knowing the real story behind why ketamine works will hopefully speed efforts to understand the nature of depression.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m also interested in it from another angle. For the last ten years, everyone<\/em> has been excited about ketamine. In a field that gets mocked for not having any really useful clinical discoveries in the last thirty years, ketamine was proof that progress was possible. It was the Exciting New Thing that everybody wanted to do research about.<\/p>\n

Given the whole replication crisis thing, I wondered. You\u2019ve got a community of people who think that NMDA antagonism and dissociation are somehow related to depression. If the latest study is true, all that was false. This is good; science is supposed to be self-correcting. But what about before<\/em> it self-corrected? Did researchers virtuously say \u201cI know the paradigm says NMDA is essential to depression, and nobody\u2019s come up with a better idea yet, but there are some troubling inconsistencies in that picture\u201d? Or did they tinker with their studies until they got the results they expected, then triumphantly declare that they had confirmed the dominant paradigm was right about everything all along?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Alexander takes a quick look at a recent discovery in medication for depression: A few weeks ago, Nature published a bombshell study showing that ketamine\u2019s antidepressant effects were actually caused by a metabolite, 2S,6S;2R,6R-hydroxynorketamine (don\u2019t worry about the name; within ten years it\u2019ll be called JOYVIVA\u2122\u00ae\u00a9 and you\u2019ll catch yourself humming advertising jingles about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,16],"tags":[141,119,243,906,1233],"class_list":["post-35026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-science","tag-depression","tag-drugs","tag-medicine","tag-mentalhealth","tag-replicationcrisis"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-96W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35027,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35026\/revisions\/35027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}