Medical Bulletin 15/July/2023

Here are the top medical news for the day:

Clinical trial finds Ketamine to be effective for treatment-resistant depression

A low-cost version of ketamine to treat severe depression has performed strongly in a double-blind trial that compared it with a placebo.

In research published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, researchers led by UNSW Sydney and the affiliated Black Dog Institute found that more than one in five participants achieved total remission from their symptoms after a month of bi-weekly injections, while a third had their symptoms improved by at least 50 percent.

The researchers recruited 179 people with treatment-resistant depression. All were given an injection of either a generic form of ketamine that is already widely available in Australia as a drug for anesthesia and sedation – or a placebo. Participants received two injections a week in a clinic where they were monitored for around two hours while acute dissociative and sedative effects wore off – usually within the first hour. The treatment ran for a month and participants were asked to assess their mood at the end of the trial and one month later.

Reference: Efficacy and safety of a 4-week course of repeated subcutaneous ketamine injections for treatment-resistant depression (KADS study): randomized double-blind active-controlled trial, The British Journal of Psychiatry, DOI 10.1192/bjp.2023.79

App to identify autistic children in India

Children with autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders in India can be successfully identified by community healthcare workers using a low-cost app, a study has found.

The results, published in Autism, could open the door to help millions of children with autism spectrum conditions to get earlier screening quickly and inexpensively, leading to life-changing support.

Researchers from India, the UK, and the US tested the app with 131 two- to seven-year-olds living in low-resource neighborhoods of Delhi, India.

Reference: Using mobile health technology to assess childhood autism in low-resource community settings in India: An innovation to address the detection gap, Autism, DOI 10.1177/13623613231182801 

 Very sharp memory function in older adults tied to faster movement and better mental health,

People in their eighties who can recall everyday events and life experiences as well as someone 20 to 30 years younger – known as superagers – are also more likely to have greater movement speed than typical older adults. They also have lower rates of anxiety and depression, according to a new study published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity journal.

Superagers and typical older adults were discovered within an ongoing project designed to help identify early indicators of Alzheimer’s disease. Of the Vallecas Project cohort’s 1,213 participants, recruited between 2011 and 2014, 64 superagers and 55 typical older adults, performing well on several cognitive tasks but not displaying superager memory ability, were identified and included in the new study

Reference: Brain structure and phenotypic profile of superagers compared with age-matched older adults: a longitudinal analysis from the Vallecas Project, The Lancet Healthy Longevity, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568(23)00079-X/fulltext