New Medication Strategies for Non-responsive Depressed Patients

Although there have been significant advances in the treatment of mood disorders, many limitations of current strategies remain-and a large proportion of patients never attain complete remission of symptoms.

A series of studies completed over the past 12 years suggest that a novel class of drugs that directly target the glutamatergic neurotransmitter system may produce rapid and robust antidepressant effects in patients who had previously not responded to the standard monoaminergic antidepressant medications.

In this companion podcast to his article, “Ketamine Induced Optimism,” Gerard Sanacora, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine and Director of the Yale Depression Research Program in New Haven, Connecticut, discusses early-phase clinical studies that provide strong evidence that this novel class of drugs may advance our ability to treat mood disorders.

Novel Drugs for Mood Disorders