By David Liu, PHD

Friday Oct 5, 2012 (foodconsumer.org) -- A case report in Journal of Palliative Medicine suggests that intramuscular injections of ketamine as part of palliative care can serve as an antidepressant to help relieve depression and as a painkiller to help improve pain in patients with terminal or advanced ovarian cancer.

Claudia Grott Zanicotti, M.D. at Department of Psychological Medicine University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand and colleagues reported a case in the journal saying that a patient with metastatic ovarian cancer had a good response to intramuscular injections of ketamine.

Depression and pain are common hardship seen in patients with advanced or metastatic cancer.  Conventional antidepressants act fairly slowly and its effect is often short-lived for patients with advanced cancer, according to the researchers.  Ketamine has been known from previous studies to have pain-relieving and antidepressant effects.

In the reported case, the ovarian cancer patient received six treatments with ketamine (intramuscular injections of ketamine in a dose of 1mg/kg) and her mood response was identical on each occasion, according to the authors, and the treatment resulted in remission of depressive symptoms.

Also, pain was improved in the ovarian cancer patient with injections of ketamine even though the effect lasted only for a shorter duration. 

The authors concluded "These findings support the use of IM (intramuscular injection) ketamine as a possible antidepressant option for this population."