Psychedelics Research Links April 2021

This is all the other psychedelic research that came out in April 2021. These papers don’t (yet) have their own page in our database.

Find our recap of the most interesting papers this month in our April Recap.

You can find all interesting papers in our Papers Database.

Related papers

Use CTRL/CMD+F to quickly search if anything relevant for you has been published this month.

• Psychedelic Medicines in Major Depression: Progress and Future Challenges (book chapter, reviews current progress)

• Novel Psychopharmacology for Depressive Disorders (book chapter, same book, focus on ketamine)

• Changes in drug use in European cities during early COVID-19 lockdowns – A snapshot from wastewater analysis (50% decrease in MDMA consumption)

• College students’ experiences with substance use at electronic music events: A qualitative study (focus groups with students (n=18), nothing too new)

• Meta-Analysis: Hemodynamic Responses to Sub-anesthetic Doses of Ketamine in Patients With Psychiatric Disorders (“sub-anesthetic ketamine and esketamine induce small but significant increases in hemodynamic parameters that are transient in nature in adult psychiatric populations“)

• Cortical Thickness Changes in Chronic Ketamine Users (correlation ≠ causation, but also no correlation between reduced cortical thickness and cognitive performance for chronic ketamine users)

• Psilocybin as a Rapid Acting Antidepressant: Are Hallucinations Necessary? (dissertation from December 2020, but now in the news via the University of Maryland School of Medicine)A published paper will probably follow, but the study found anti-depressant effects in mice, after pre-treatment with ketanserinthus blocking the acute psychedelic effect

• Single Subcutaneous Ketamine Dose Followed by Oral Ketamine for Depression Symptoms in Hospice Patients: A Case Series (n=3, administration of both IV and then oral ketamine)

• Psychedelics: Old drugs, new trips (editorial)

• Back to the Future – The Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Drugs (editorial in NEJM, but fails to correctly spell Hofmann…)

• Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of Tryptamines in the Poison of Incilius alvarius (Amphibia: Bufonidae) (analysis of ‘poison’ aka 5-MeO-DMT)

• A cluster of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) poisonings following insufflation of a white powder sold as cocaine (medical care needed for some who mistook LSD for cocaine, plasma concentrations of LSD up to 0.06mg/L)

• Heart rate as a predictor of ketamine’s fast-acting antidepressant response (in press, no version available yet, editorial)

• Glycine attenuates impairments of stimulus-evoked gamma oscillation in the ketamine model of schizophrenia (pre-print, “we propose that the aeGBR represents a possible biomarker for negative symptoms in schizophrenia related to insufficient glutamatergic neurotransmission. This would allow to identify patients with negative symptoms, who might benefit from glutamatergic treatment.”)

• Machine learning vs. field 3D-QSAR models for serotonin 2A receptor psychoactive substances identification (identifying which molecules, from a huge library, activate the 5-HT2a receptor)

• LSD use in the United States: Trends, correlates, and a typology of us (more people are using LSD)

• Influence of 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI) on ethanol preference and consumption in C57BL/6 male mice (DOI didn’t lower consumption of alcohol for mice)

• Bipolar Disorder: Microdosing Psilocybin to Lessen Depressive Symptoms (thesis)

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Ketamine, and Combination Treatment for Depression: Impressions of Credibility in Participants with Self-Reported Depressive Symptoms (patients didn’t prefer ketamine treatment, n=500, but this is just based on a description, CBT + ketamine scored the same as CBT alone)

• Prediction of repeated-dose intravenous ketamine response in major depressive disorder using the GWAS-based machine learning approach (using a machine learning algorithm to identify the genetic markers of who will respond to ketamine treatment, could be useful if genetic testing is widely available – or cheap enough to use during screening)

• Entheogens and psychedelics in Canada: Proposal for a new paradigm. (“ laying the groundwork for therapeutic, spiritual, and research involvement/activities with psychedelics“)

• Molecular and Functional Imaging Studies of Psychedelic Drug Action in Animals and Humans (review, relatively limited number of radiolabeled hallucinogen studies)

• The Shipibo Ceremonial Use of Ayahuasca to Promote Well-Being: an Observational Study (to be published soon, finds positive long-term effects after traditional ayahuasca use)

• Efficacy of psychedelics in psychiatry, a systematic review of the literature (review, identifies 25 top-studies, but of course also notes small size)

• Prolonged ketamine exposure induces enhanced excitatory GABAergic synaptic activity in the anterior cingulate cortex of neonatal rats (in rats, “GABAAR-mediated excitatory action may contribute distinctly to neuronal excitotoxic effects of ketamine on immature neurons in the developing brain“)

• Augmentation of Psychotherapy with Neurobiological Methods: Current State and Future Directions (review, small part about psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy)

• Biosynthesis and synthetic biology of psychoactive natural products (review, identifying biosynthetic pathways how psychedelics are made)

• Repeated subcutaneous esketamine administration for depressive symptoms and pain relief in a terminally ill cancer patient: A case report (n=1, lower depression scores, pain relief but not stable)

• Ketamine induces rapid and sustained antidepressant-like effects in chronic pain induced depression: Role of MAPK signaling pathway (in mice!)

• Sex differences on the behavior and oxidative stress after ketamine treatment in adult rats subjected to early life stress (in mice, possibly relieving effects of ketamine for stress in early life, mostly effects for males)

• Topological Analysis of Differential Effects of Ketamine and Propofol Anesthesia on Brain Dynamics (pre-print, finding the ketamine state to be more complex than propofol (another anesthetic) but less so than waking consciousness)

• Biased agonism in drug discovery: Is there a future for biased 5-HT1A receptor agonists in the treatment of neuropsychiatric diseases? (review, of the serotonin 1a receptor, not specifically about psychedelics which are associated primarily with the 2a receptor)

• The Role of Psychedelics in Medicine: Historical Context and Current Clinical Applications (white paper/review, published on Usona website)

• Psychedelic use is not related to conspiracy mentality (thesis)

• Novel Glutamatergic Modulators for the Treatment of Mood Disorders: Current Status (review, other ketamine-like compounds, “the ones for which the most evidence exists, appear to be those targeting ionotropic glutamate receptors.“)

• Ketamine Metabolite (2 R,6 R)-Hydroxynorketamine Interacts with μ and κ Opioid Receptors (“our findings are consistent with opioid pathway involvement in ketamine function.“)

• Esketamine: A Drug to Treat Resistant Depression That Brings More Questions Than Answers (commentary, critical)

• Traditional Healing Practices Involving Psychoactive Plants and the Global Mental Health Agenda (commentary, human rights)

• Computerized-Adaptive vs. Traditional Ratings of Depression and Suicidal Thoughts: An Assay Sensitivity Pilot Study in a Ketamine Clinical Trial (may be more sensitive rating/scale/measure than other scales e.g. Beck Depression Inventory)

• Adjunctive music improves the tolerability of intravenous ketamine for bipolar depression (n=2, case studies, positive effect of music)

• Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy Practices and Human Caring Science: Toward a Care-Informed Model of Treatment (proposes model of care, identifies themes, generates hypotheses)

• Analysis of 28 hair samples from users of the hallucinogenic beverage ayahuasca (finding DMT levels through hair analysis)

• MDLSD: study protocol for a randomised, double-masked, placebo-controlled trial of repeated microdoses of LSD in healthy volunteers (study protocol)

• A preliminary study of the association of increased anterior cingulate gamma-aminobutyric acid with remission of depression after ketamine administration (n=7, “Next-day treatment remission and reduction in the MADRS scores correlated with anterior cingulate cortex peak GABA levels”)

• Whitewashing psychedelics: racial equity in the emerging field of psychedelic-assisted mental health research and treatment (editorial, racial equity and lack of BIPOC participants in trials)

• Th17 Cells in Depression: Are They Crucial for the Antidepressant Effect of Ketamine? (“The immune-modulating role of Th17 cells may participate in the antidepressant effect of ketamine“)