Laughing Gas Relieves Symptoms in People With Treatment-Resistant Depression

upstart writes:

Laughing gas relieves symptoms in people with treatment-resistant depression:

A single, one-hour treatment that involves breathing in a mixture of oxygen and nitrous oxide - otherwise known as laughing gas - significantly improved symptoms in people with treatment-resistant depression, according to new data from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Chicago.

[...] "A large percentage of patients don't respond to standard antidepressant therapies - the patients in this study had failed an average of 4.5 antidepressant trials - and it's very important to find therapies to help these patients," said Charles R. Conway, MD, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University and one of the study's senior investigators. "That we saw rapid improvements in many such patients in the study suggests nitrous oxide may help people with really severe, resistant depression."

[...] The primary conclusions in this study were that nitrous oxide - both at 25% and in a 50-50 mixture with oxygen - improved depression in 17 of those study participants. The differences between a 25% mix and a 50% mix mainly involved how long the antidepressant effects lasted. Whereas the 50% dosage had greater antidepressant effects two weeks after treatment, the 25% dose was associated with fewer adverse events, the most common of which was feeling nauseated.

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