







Breakthrough Medication for Treatment Resistant Depression


Editor’s note This story courtesy of NPR.org, John Hamilton
The Food and Drug Administration approved the first drug that can relieve depression in hours instead of weeks.
Esketamine, a chemical cousin of the anesthetic and party drug ketamine, represents the first truly new kind of depression drug since Prozac hit the market in 1988.
The FDA’s decision came Tuesday, less than a month after a panel of experts advising the agency voted overwhelmingly in favor of approval.
“There has been a long-standing need for additional effective treatments for treatment-resistant depression, a serious and life-threatening condition,” said Dr. Tiffany Farchione, acting director of the Division of Psychiatry Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in a press release about the decision.
“This is potentially a game changer for millions of people,” said Dr. Dennis Charney, dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. “It offers a lot of hope.”
Esketamine works through a mechanism different from those of drugs like Prozac, Charney said. And that is probably why studies show it can often help people with major depressive disorder who haven’t been helped by other drugs.
Charney was part of the team that first showed two decades ago that ketamine could treat depression. He also is named as co-inventor on patents filed by the Icahn School of Medicine relating to the treatment for treatment-resistant depression, suicidal ideation and other disorders.
Esketamine, developed by Johnson & Johnson, will be administered as a nasal spray and be used in conjunction with an oral antidepressant. It will be marketed under the brand name Spravato. The FDA has approved it for patients who have failed to respond adequately to at least two other drugs.
That means about 5 million of the 16 million people in the U.S. with major depression might benefit from esketamine, said Courtney Billington, president of Janssen Neuroscience, a unit of Johnson & Johnson.


SHOTS – HEALTH NEWS
From Chaos To Calm: A Life Changed By Ketamine
But esketamine presents some challenges because of its similarities to ketamine. In high doses, both drugs can cause sedation and out-of-body experiences. And ketamine, often called Special K in its illicit form, has become a popular party drug.
So Johnson & Johnson is taking steps to make sure esketamine will be used only as intended, Billington said.
“Spravato will not be dispensed directly to a patient to take at home,” he said. “It will only be available in approved and certified treatment centers.”
Patients will inhale the drug under supervision at these centers once or twice a week. And they will receive a dose that is unlikely to produce side effects such as hallucinations.
“The amount of active ingredient that’s in this product, it’s at a very, very low dose,” Billington said.
Even so, the FDA, according to its press release, is requiring a warning label that says patients “are at risk for sedation and difficulty with attention, judgment and thinking (dissociation), abuse and misuse, and suicidal thoughts and behaviors after administration of the drug,”
Esketamine’s approval comes as more and more doctors have begun administering a generic version of ketamine for depression. Generic ketamine is approved as an anesthetic, not as an antidepressant. Even so, doctors can legally prescribe it for off-label medical uses.
And as a growing number of studies have shown ketamine’s effectiveness against depression, ketamine clinics have sprung up around the United States. These clinics often administer the drug in an intravenous infusion that can cost more than $500 per treatment.
Many doctors who have become comfortable offering ketamine for depression probably won’t switch to esketamine, said Dr. Demitri Papolos, director of research for the Juvenile Bipolar Research Foundation and a clinical associate professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
For the past 10 years, Papolos has been prescribing an intranasal form of ketamine for children and adolescents who have a disorder that includes symptoms of depression.
“I’m very pleased that finally the FDA has approved a form of ketamine for treatment-resistant mood disorders,” Papolos said. He said the approval legitimizes the approach he and other doctors have been taking.
But he hopes that doctors who are currently using ketamine continue to do so. “It’ll be a lot less expensive and a lot easier for their patients [than esketamine],” he said.
And animal studies show it’s possible that old-fashioned ketamine is a more potent antidepressant than esketamine, Papolos said.
Esketamine “may not be as effective as a generic that any psychiatrist or physician can prescribe without restrictions,” Papolos said.
Johnson & Johnson said the wholesale cost of each treatment with esketamine will range from $590 to $885, depending on the dose. That means twice-weekly treatments during the first month will cost centers that offer the drug at least $4,720 to $6,785. Subsequent weekly treatments will cost about half as much.
The drugmaker says those figures don’t include administration and observation costs.






World's first baby born from 3-parent technique: report
The woman, whose identity was withheld by New Scientist, and her husband sought the help of John Zhang, a doctor from the New Hope Fertility Center in New York City to have a baby that would be genetically related to them but would not carry the inherited disease.
World’s first baby born from 3-parent technique: report More Miami (AFP) – The world’s first baby has been born using a controversial new technique by US scientists to include DNA from three parents in the embryo, said a report. The baby boy was born five months ago in Mexico to Jordanian parents, and is healthy and doing well, said the report in New Scientist magazine, described as an “exclusive.” The boy’s mother carried genes for a disorder known as Leigh Syndrome, a fatal nervous system disorder whic
Source: World’s first baby born from 3-parent technique: report






8 Tools to Get Control of your Anxiety
8 Tools to Get Control of your Anxiety Looking at repeating patterns (fractals) is proven to relieve anxiety. See below for more details. It’s time to learn tangible tools to control your anxiety, so that it stops controlling you! Feeling anxious is uncomfortable, painful and difficult to manage in every which way. Your body is on overdrive. You can’t think straight. Everything feels like it’s crashing down at any moment and you just can’t stop the chaos. The truth is that anxiety is a symptom of some de






Women’s Infertility Support Group / August through November 2016
***This event has been cancelled
Led by Diane Cote, LCSW, 415.366.8830, dianecotelcsw@gmail.com
This “Leader-Led RESOLVE Support Group” is open to women with a diagnosis of infertility.
Topics include; IVF cycling, repeat miscarriage, third party reproduction, secondary infertility and integrated healing approaches. We will discuss the impact infertility has on your close relationships, your career, and social situations.
We will work with challenging feelings and how treatment impacts your mind and body.
Participants and leader serve as resources to each other in the practical matters of navigating clinics and agencies.
I will lead participants through mindfulness-based techniques that can be used for coping with ongoing, day-to-day, stress.
A strong emphasis on self-renewal, self-care and self-compassion will be at the heart of the group, which will be conducted in a safe and confidential setting.
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Meets every other Wednesday morning from 8:00AM to 9:15AM
Dates: August 24th, September 7th & 21st, October 5th & 19th, November 2nd, 2016
Location: 1730 South Amphlett Blvd., Suite 209, San Mateo, CA 94402
Fee: $360 for 6-week commitment, payment required at first meeting.
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