Ketamine and Esketamine May Improve Quality of Life in MDD and TRD Patients
The use of ketamine and esketamine as antidepressant treatments may lead to a significantly improved quality of life (QoL) in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) or treatment-resistant depression (TRD), according to a systematic review published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
“To our knowledge, this is one of the first systematic reviews that evaluates the link between QoL and ketamine or esketamine treatment in patients with either MDD or TRD,” wrote Morgan C.H. Cheng, Brain and Cognition Discovery Foundation, Toronto, ON, Canada, and study coauthors.
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In their review, the researchers included 5 studies investigating the association between ketamine or esketamine and QoL measures in 1688 total patients aged 18 or older with a confirmed diagnosis of MDD or TRD. The scales used to measure QoL included the World Health Organization Quality of Life - Brief (WHOQOL-BREF), the Assessment of Quality of Life 8D (AQoL-8D) test, and the EuroQol-5 Dimension-5 Layers (EQ-5D-5L) questionnaire.
Statistically significant results from all of the included studies showed that QoL improved following ketamine or esketamine treatment (p < 0.001).
However, the included studies received an overall moderate quality rating; the authors evaluated the studies’ quality using the Risk Of Bias In Non-randomized Studies - of Interventions (ROBINS-I) tool for the included non-randomized control trials (n=2) and the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) for the included open-label studies and secondary/post-hoc analysis of clinical trials (n=3).
“Thus, although the foregoing observations may demonstrate that ketamine and esketamine may rapidly alleviate depressive symptoms and improve measures of QoL in adults with MDD or TRD, further investigation of the long-term effects of these agents are warranted,” the authors wrote.
The researchers also suggested that future studies further investigate the extent of the direct effect ketamine and esketamine have on QoL outcomes, as well as the impact that the interventions have on specific domains of QoL.