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The US Food and Drug Administration has approved esketamine to treat adults whose depression hasn’t responded to other antidepressants, the agency announced in a statement yesterday (March 5). Spravato, an esketamine-containing nasal spray developed by Johnson & Johnson, was tested for use with oral antidepressants as a therapy for treatment-resistant depression.
Spravato is the first major depression drug to enter the US market in decades, reports STAT. Compared to many currently available antidepressants that may take weeks or months to produce an effect, esketamine works within hours, according to The Washington Post.
Its swift action “is a huge thing because depressed patients are very disabled and suffer enormously,” John Mann, a psychiatrist and researcher at Columbia University, tells The Associated Press.
Esketamine is a relative of ketamine, a powerful anesthetic that has been co-opted as a party drug because it can produce euphoric effects and psychedelic ...
