Subanesthetic ketamine found effective in amblyopia in adults, finds study
Irvine, Calif. - Ketamine is used for pain management and as an antidepressant in humans.
Researchers from the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine have found in a new study that subanesthetic ketamine is effective in treating adult amblyopia, a brain disorder commonly known as "lazy eye." The new study has been published in Current Biology.
"Our study, demonstrates how a single-dose of subanesthetic ketamine reactivates adult visual cortical plasticity and promotes functional recovery of visual acuity defects resulting from amblyopia," explained Xiangmin Xu, PhD, a professor of anatomy and neurobiology and director of the Center for Neural Circuit Mapping at the UCI School of Medicine.
Subanesthetic ketamine, commonly used to treat depression and pain, evokes rapid and long-lasting antidepressant effects in human patients. There was evidence that ketamine may control how the nervous system makes structural changes in response to internal and external demands, a process called neural plasticity. But, how the drug worked remained elusive, until now.
"Our research team showed that ketamine down-regulates NRG1 expression in PV inhibitory cells, resulting in sustained cortical disinhibition to enhance cortical plasticity in adult visual cortex," said Steven F. Grieco, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in the Xu lab and lead author.
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