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opiod system

Spotlight: Antidepressants and the endogenous opioid system (Fricker, et al, 2025)

"A growing body of evidence links the opioid system w/ major depressive disorder... two different widely used antidepressants, tianeptine & ketamine, both interact with MOR; tianeptine as a full agonist, ketamine as a positive allosteric modulator. Both produce antidepressant effects within days."
Michael DeMarco, PhD

by Michael DeMarco, PhD

Antidepressants and the endogenous opioid system - PubMed
The endogenous opioid system consists of three different G protein-coupled receptors, named mu-, delta- and kappa-opioid receptors (MOR, DOR, and KOR, respectively). These receptors are activated by over 20 distinct peptides produced from proenkephalin, prodynorphin, and proopiomelanocortin. The end …
PubMedLloyd D Fricker

(2025): "While the conventional view is that major depressive disorder is caused by an imbalance of biogenic amine neurotransmitters, drugs that affect these neurotransmitter systems typically require weeks of dosing before showing antidepressant effects... Chronic antidepressant treatment of mice causes changes in gene expression. "

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Real-world clinical data on the long-term effectiveness and safety of generic racemic ketamine treatment (Massaneda-Tuneu, et al, 2025)

Spotlight: Real-world clinical data on the long-term effectiveness and safety of generic racemic ketamine treatment (Massaneda-Tuneu, et al, 2025)

"Findings suggested that racemic ketamine (including by mouth), when appropriately dosed and administered within a structured clinical and safety monitoring framework, is both effective, safe and well-tolerated over a 6-month treatment period."

Spotlight: Synaptic priming: A framework for pharmacotherapy in depression (Brown, et al, 2025)

"we describe how the indirect relationship between ketamine's pharmacokinetics and sustained antidepressant pharmacodynamics reveals a dosing model (primer pharmacology) that can be harnessed to fine-tune therapeutic outcomes."

Ketamine Sustains and Enhances the Protective Effects of a Ketogenic Diet Against Relapses in an Anorexia Mouse Model (Dong, et al, 2025)

"Ketamine sustains and boosts Ketogenic Diet benefits for > 10 days, supporting clinical findings that short-term KGD + KET may be an effective treatment for preventing anorexia nervosa relapses."

Change in the Neural Response to Auditory Deviance Following Cognitive Therapy for Hallucinations in Patients With Schizophrenia (Knott, et al, 2020)

"These findings of improved auditory information processing and symptom-response attributable to CBTv suggest potential clinical and functional benefits of psychotherapeutical approaches for patients with persistent AVHs."

Spotlight: Ketamine Harm Reduction

Prevention & Treatment in Ketamine Use Disorder - When a medicine becomes a poison

Spotlight: The effects of low-dose ketamine and (2R,6R)-Hydroxynorketamine on affective behaviors associated with protracted oxycodone withdrawal (Lehane, et al, 2025)

"These findings demonstrate the therapeutic potential of (2R,6R)-HNK and ketamine in alleviating affective symptoms of oxycodone withdrawal. "
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