Neurochemistry

New research this week is the latest to find that ketamine can help people with difficult-to-treat depression. The study has found that people with treatment-resistant depression responded as well to ketamine therapy as those who were given electroconvulsive therapy, a commonly used intervention for these cases.Twitter Is Shifting Right | Future TechKetamine has been employed as an anesthetic in medicine for decades. It can also be used as a recreational drug with euphoric and dissociative effects. But more recently, it’s…

A new study is the latest to suggest that modest alcohol consumption isn’t likely to provide any health benefits. The research, a review of existing studies, found no strong evidence that light to moderate drinking can reduce people’s risk of dying early. Past studies that did find a positive effect might have failed to account for the poorer health of former drinkers and other factors, the scientists say.Mental Health Apps Are a Privacy NightmareChronic,heavy drinking has long been tied to health problems, from early…

Sadly, this stock image is probably not how the actual study was performed. Image: Indigo Fish (Shutterstock)A team of scientists appears to be on track toward developing an effective treatment for drunkenness. In research out this week, they were able to quickly sober up drunk mice by boosting their levels of a naturally produced hormone called FGF21. More research will need to be done, but the team believes that FGF21 could someday be used to treat acute episodes of alcohol poisoning.The study was led by scientists from…

A patient sits in their home with ketamine tablets, provided through the company Mindbloom.Photo: ED JONES/AFP (Getty Images)Around 2.8 million Americans suffer from treatment-resistant depression, and though research has shown that IV ketamine can significantly improve their quality of life, these ketamine treatments are expensive, and access to them is limited. Early in the covid-19 pandemic, the Drug Enforcement Agency loosened restrictions on remote prescribing for Schedule III medications like ketamine. In response,…

Image: Shutterstock (Shutterstock)America’s alcohol habit comes with a hefty annual death toll, new research shows. The study estimates that excess drinking is responsible for one of every eight deaths in Americans between the ages of 20 to 64 every year. And though younger people are less likely to die in general, alcohol might help cause one in every five deaths among adults below the age of 50.It’s long been clear that drinking alcohol can be deadly, especially chronically heavy or binge drinking. But scientists from…

If you’ve gone online this week or turned on the TV, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about the gross and potentially fatal practice of cooking chicken in NyQuil. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration warned about the “recent NyQuil chicken” challenge, and by the amount of coverage it’s gotten, you would think that a whole swath of people had been doing this very stupid thing. But not quite.When I first saw the news articles pop up about NyQuil chicken earlier this week, I felt a strange sense of déjà vu. This was…