Effects of serotonin 2A/1A receptor stimulation by psilocybin on mood and emotion processing in major depressive disorder: a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the world's greatest contributor to the global burden of disease and MDD affects around 17% of the Swiss population (Tomonaga et al. 2013). It i...
Psilocybin therapy shows antidepressant potential, but its therapeutic actions are not well understood. We assessed the subacute impact of psilocybin on brain function in two clinical trials of depression. The first was an open-label trial of orally administered psilocybin (10 mg and 25 mg, 7 d apart) in patients with treatment-resistant depression. Function...
4-Acetoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine (4-AcO-DMT, psilacetin, O-acetylpsilocin) is a synthetic tryptamine with psychedelic properties. Psilacetin may also act as precursor drug of psilocin, similar to psilocybin, but little is known about its metabolism. In this study, the phase I and phase II in vitro metabolism of 4-AcO-DMT was investigated with pooled human li...
Psychedelic drugs including psilocybin, N,N'-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) are undergoing a renaissance as potentially useful drugs for various neuropsychiatric diseases, with a rapid onset of therapeutic activity. Notably, phase II trials have shown that psilocybin can produce statistically significant clinical effects follow...
Psychedelics such as psilocybin have recently gained remarkable interest in both the specialist literature and the lay press because studies suggest that these substances may have great therapeutic potential in various psychiatric disorders, including major depression. However, clinical trials with psychedelic drugs pose particular methodological challenges ...
IntroductionThere is an imminent need for faster-acting and more effective antidepressants beyond the monoaminergic hypothesis.MethodsWe systematically searched the US Clinical Trials registry for antidepressant compounds with completed phase II and III trials. Compounds that demonstrated significant superiority over placebo in the primary outcome measure in...
Carhart-Harris et al. performed a study in which they compared psilocybin in combination with psychotherapy to escitalopram in combination with psychotherapy for depression. In this commentary, the author first summarizes the study results: in this double blind randomized controlled trial, psilocybin yielded an antidepressant effect comparable to escitalopra...
Carhart-Harris et al. performed a study in which they compared psilocybin in combination with psychotherapy to escitalopram in combination with psychotherapy for depression. In this commentary, the author first summarizes the study results: in this double blind randomized controlled trial, psilocybin yielded an antidepressant effect comparable to escitalopra...
The largest trial to date of the psychedelic drug psilocybin has shown that, alongside psychological support, a single 25mg dose may improve the symptoms of treatment-resistant depression. The phase II study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on 3 November 2022, was conducted across 22 sites in 10 countries, including the UK, between […]
Background: Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was extensively investigated in humans in the 1950s and 1960s. Particularly, LSD attenuated anxiety in patients with cancer. Clinical research with LSD ended in the 1970s due to regulatory restrictions but its use for personal and recreational purposes continued. In recent years, there has been a renewed interest ...
This is a Phase II, single-center, fixed dose, open label trial to explore the safety, tolerability and efficacy of a 25mg dose of psilocybin in cancer patients with MDD. The study population will include adult men and women, 18 years of age or above, with MDD, diagnosed with a malignant neoplasm. MDD is defined as those who meet DSM5 diagnostic criteria for...
Serotonergic hallucinogens psilocybin, and its active metabolite psilocin, have shown promise as rapid-acting antidepressants. The FDA granted breakthrough therapy designation for psilocybin's use as an antidepressant in 2019, and phase II clinical trials are currently ongoing. Psilocybin is converted to psilocin following oral administration, and this metab...
Psilocybin therapy appears to be at least as effective as escitalopram in treating depression, findings from a small phase II study published in the New England Journal of Medicine have indicated (15 April 2021)[1]. Researchers compared two sessions of psychedelic psilocybin therapy, delivered in a specialist clinical setting, with a course of the selectiv...
Mounting evidence suggests safety and efficacy of psychedelic compounds as potential novel therapeutics in psychiatry. Ketamine has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration in a new class of antidepressants, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is undergoing phase III clinical trials for post-traumatic stress disorder. Psilocybin and lysergi...
Psilocybin is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound produced by more than 200 species of mushrooms, collectively known as psilocybin mushrooms. Psilocybin (4-phosphoroyloxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine) is a hallucinogenic tryptamine that was first isolated from Psilocybe mushrooms in 1957. The objective of this Phase I clinical trial is to determine the phar...
psilocybin; depression; terminal cancer; CME; CNE: psilocybin; depression; terminal cancer; CME; CNEPsilocybin is a naturally occurring alkaloid found in more than 200 species of mushrooms. This compound, which was first isolated by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofman in 1959, is the active constituent of psychedelic mushrooms which are thought to have been util...
We have examined the glucuronidation of psilocin, a hallucinogenic indole alkaloid, by the 19 recombinant human UDP-glucuronosyltransferases (UGTs) of subfamilies 1A, 2A, and 2B. The glucuronidation of 4-hydroxyindole, a related indole that lacks the N,N-dimethylaminoethyl side chain, was studied as well. UGT1A10 exhibited the highest psilocin glucuronidatio...
This paper describes a procedure for the determination of psilocin and psilocybin in mushroom extracts using high-performance liquid chromatography with postcolumn chemiluminescence detection. A number of extraction methods for psilocin and psilocybin in hallucinogenic mushrooms were investigated, with a simple methanolic extraction being found to be most ef...
