Effect of Ketamine vs. Active Placebo on Suicidal Ideation in Depressed Inpatients With Major Depressive Disorder or Bipolar Depression.

Summary

Depression and suicidal ideation/attempt/death are major causes of morbidity and mortality from psychiatric illnesses. In 2009, the World Health Organization listed depression as the leading cause of years lost due to disability worldwide. Suicide is the 9th most common cause of death in Canada with 1.6% of Canadians ultimately dying from suicide (Statistics Canada, 2012) and the 2nd most common cause of death in young people after accidental deaths. This information highlights the importance of finding treatments to prevent suicidal deaths. Ketamine has been shown to provide rapid treatment response for major depressive episodes both in major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD), via a single intravenous infusion which persists for at least 72 hours. The purpose of this study is to conduct a pilot trial of IV ketamine + treatment as usual (TAU) vs. midazolam (an active placebo) + TAU to estimate sample size for a full-scale RCT examining these treatments for decreasing suicidal ideation among depressed inpatients with major depressive disorder and bipolar depression. A total of 52 patients will be recruited for this trial. All subjects will be inpatients at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre with a diagnosis of either major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder type I or II currently depressed. Suicidal ideation must be present at baseline assessment in order to be included in the study. Thirteen subjects will be randomized to each treatment arm in each treatment stream - that is, 13 will be recruited to ketamine + TAU in the major depressive disorder stream, and 13 will be recruited to the midazolam + TAU in the major depressive stream. Likewise, 26 subjects with bipolar depression will be randomized to these two treatments.

Timeline

Start

2016-01

Primary completion

2017-04

Completion

2017-04

Publications

• Background Aan Het Rot M, Zarate CA Jr, Charney DS, Mathew SJ. Ketamine for depression: where do we go from here? Biol Psychiatry. 2012 Oct 1;72(7):537-47. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2012.05.003. Epub 2012 Jun 16.
• Background World Health Organization (WHO). Global health risks: mortality and burden of disease attributable to selected major risks. 2009. [http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/GlobalHealthRisks_report_full.pdf; accessed April 4, 2013]
• Background Yatham LN, Kennedy SH, Parikh SV, Schaffer A, Beaulieu S, Alda M, O'Donovan C, Macqueen G, McIntyre RS, Sharma V, Ravindran A, Young LT, Milev R, Bond DJ, Frey BN, Goldstein BI, Lafer B, Birmaher B, Ha K, Nolen WA, Berk M. Canadian Network for Mood and Anxiety Treatments (CANMAT) and International Society for Bipolar Disorders (ISBD) collaborative update of CANMAT guidelines for the management of patients with bipolar disorder: update 2013. Bipolar Disord. 2013 Feb;15(1):1-44. doi: 10.1111/bdi.12025. Epub 2012 Dec 12.

Drugs

Indications