Alliance collaboration leads to breakthrough for depression
Alliance researchers have opened the door to new avenues of research into the treatment of depression, after a clinical trial that used laughing gas to treat patients with severe depression had “beneficial and persistent antidepressant effects” on symptoms.
Prof Jayashri Kulkarni and Prof Paul Myles conducted a trial with 81 participants for whom regular antidepressant medication was not treating their depression adequately.
“While nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, is commonly used for sedation and pain relief, it also targets a different brain pathway that conventional antidepressants otherwise pass through,” Prof Myles said.
Read the publication: The research paper: Antidepressant Effects of Nitrous Oxide in Major Depressive Disorder: A Phase 2b Randomised Clinical Trial, was published in Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science.
Prof Paul Myles, Director of Anaesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at Alfred Health and Prof Jayashri Kulkarni, Multidisciplinary Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre Director and Monash University School of Translational Medicine.