Let's talk about a radical idea for treating depression that's got people buzzing. Hallucinogens, right? Specifically, stuff like LSD, psilocybin, and DMT. These babies are being tested for their potential to lift moods in just one doctor-supervised session, lasting for months. Think of it as Prozac on warp speed, without the waiting game.
• The dream is to keep the mood-boosting charm of psychedelics while ditching the trippy experience. That's where Dr. Eero Castrén and his Finnish research crew step in. They dove headfirst into the microscopic world to figure out what's causing the high versus what's causing the happiness.
• Turns out, psychedelics, like your everyday antidepressants, trigger growth in neurons. But they do it way better, 1,000 times better than Prozac, in fact. They latch onto a crucial molecule, TrkB, and with just one dose, can reduce fear and elevate mood in mice.
• When the team genetically tweaked the mice to lack a crucial protein, the LSD lost its ability to boost mood, but the high remained. That tells us that LSD walks down two roads in the brain: one leading to neural growth and the other triggering a trip.
Now, new neurons are great, but what do they do exactly? Well, the team put LSD to the test in different stressful scenarios for mice. Those who got a dose of LSD outperformed their counterparts in swimming tests and showed reduced fear in anxiety-inducing environments. But before you get any ideas, LSD isn't a magical solution, and don't forget, the entire gig needs to be controlled and supervised.
Despite the stigma around hallucinogens, they're gaining ground as potential antidepressants. For example, Esketamine, a cousin of the club drug Special K, got the thumbs up as an antidepressant in 2019. This new research gives us a fresh angle on how to design a new era of antidepressants that work fast, last long, but steer clear of hallucinogenic effects.
[Original article by Shelly Fan, published on https://singularityhub.com/2023/06/06/psychedelic-inspired-drugs-could-beat-depression-without-the-trip/]
