In a pilot study, d-serine levels may serve as a biomarker for clinical response in individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treated with (R,S)-ketamine infusion combined with TIMBER psychotherapy. The work suggests that changes in d-serine could reflect treatment outcomes, offering a potential biological indicator for monitoring therapeutic efficacy.
Depression affects about 121 million people worldwide, and major depressive disorder occurs in 6.4% of US adults. Treatment resistant depression (TRD) accounts for 12–20% of depression patients and costs $29–$48 billion annually. Ketamine and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) are useful for TRD but their long-term utility is unknown. Yoga and meditation, including mindfulness based cognitive therapy (MBCT), have been useful in treating depression and preventing relapse. This review presents rTMS, ketamine, and MBCT, and reports a depression-specific model of Yoga and MBCT (DepS Y-MBCT) that successfully ameliorated TRD symptoms in 27 out of 32 patients in an open label pilot trial. The authors suggest a tiered approach combining ketamine and rTMS for rapid remission and DepS Y-MBCT for maintaining remission and preventing relapse.