Next great antidepressant: the hallucinogenic ketamine

Ketamine (known as Special K to you and me, I mean on the streets…) has been basically banned for human use as an anesthetic due to its hallucinogenic properties.  Not only do you sleep through the major surgery, but you have a great time during it as well.  It has been known for about 2 years that ketamine works as a great antidepressant, and almost instantly, compared with current antidepressant therapy, which can take 4-6 weeks to work.  (Imagine how long it takes for you to order something on TV and not being happy until it arrived.)

Now, scientists have a better understanding of how ketamine works.  It has been known that ketamine works against NMDA receptors in the brain, but now it has been discovered that they also work on a new kind of receptor, the AMPA receptor.  If we could some how develop a drug that works against both the NMDA and more importantly the AMPA receptors without giving you such a great hallucinogenic trip, we may come up with a better antidepressant. 

Of course, maybe it is the hallucinogenic effect itself that is causing the antidepressant effect…

Diltiazem: for those tough cocaine fixes…

Ever wondered why each day as you took your next diltiazem (Cardizem) pill that “hey, I’m not craving cocaine today!”?  Well, wonder no more.  Scientists at Boston University have recently found that diltiazem, a calcium channel blocker used to control blood pressure, can actually reduce cocaine cravings, at least in mice (they get all the good drugs!).

Dopamine and glutamate are two chemicals in your brain that are blamed for the highly addictive properties of cocaine.  Both of these chemicals are basically pleasure compounds, and your brain has a lot to learn from pleasure compounds.  The happier your brain gets, the happier it likes to stay, so therefore you become addictive to certain drugs, like cocaine, that release these compounds.  Where diltiazem comes in is that, as a calcium channel blocker, it disrupts the communication between these compounds, in which calcium is needed.  No calcium means no communication, which leads to less happy feelings from the cocaine, and less cravings.  No wonder you haven’t had any of those cocaine cravings while on diltiazem all those years.

This research will be published in the March issue of Nature Neuroscience.  There are currently no drug therapies for cocaine addiction.  Do not, however, start taking diltiazem if you are addicted to cocaine, unless you are a rat, in which case if you are a cocaine addict rat, please e-mail me…

Your pee is changing lives, one fish at a time

Are you a woman?  Are you on birth control pills?  Are you urinating?  If you answered yes to all three questions, then you might be to blame for the recent surge in females in fisheries.  Small species of fish have been found to be changing sex in rivers and streams that you pee into.  Now, I know you urinate into a toilet (at least I hope so…) but where do you think that urine ends up?  It’s cleaned and dumped into a lake, and the estrogens in your birth control are pee’d out and affect the fish population.  Think Jurassic Park.  So, how can this happen?

Well, when you take a drug, some (if not most) of the time you simply eliminate it by peeing it out, unchanged.  Sometimes your liver does most of the work, changing the drug around so you can pee it out easier, but for estrogens, you simply pee it out.  This is why you have to take drugs every day, because your body is very good at getting rid of them.  This goes for chemotherapy and radiation chemotherapy as well, as your urine could actually be radioactive, but I digress…

So, the medicines you take are leaking into the streams, the fish swim around it and change sexes.  So?  Well, too many females are a problem (in more ways then one…).  You cannot reproduce without males and females, so you can’t make babies.  No small fish babies equals no big fish food.  No big fish food equals no big fish.  No big fish equals no food for us.    This effect has also been seen in antibiotics as well, causing fish to succumb to superbugs too. 

Well, at least there will be more breast meat…Oh wait, that’s chicken.  Oh, and the fish’s acne has cleared up, and the sex is much safer…