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    Home > Is the ancient psychedelic in the Amazon jungle expected to become a quick acting antidepressant?

    Is the ancient psychedelic in the Amazon jungle expected to become a quick acting antidepressant?

    • Last Update: 2017-04-23
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    Rattan water, a hallucinogen with hundreds of years of history, is brewed from the bark and leaves of rattan in the Amazon rainforest According to the local tradition, only the shaman of the tribe can prepare it through a special religious ceremony However, this mysterious potion has also been studied by anthropologists, sociologists and theologians Only in biomedical field, there are only some animal experiments and brain imaging studies of healthy volunteers, and no clinical research on disease treatment has been carried out In recent years, some biochemists have begun to study the liquid medicine, which they think may be used to treat depression Two years ago, scientists from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, published a clinical report of sinomenine, saying that it has a potential effect on depression Although the study involved only six participants and there was no placebo control group, the scientists said the liquid started to reduce depression symptoms in a few hours, and still had an effect in the next three weeks Recently, scientists carried out a larger clinical trial in Brazil: 14 patients with drug-resistant depression were treated with a single dose, and 15 patients with the same disease were treated with placebo After a week, the depression symptoms of the patients who took the water showed significant improvement "The results showed that the antidepressant effect of sinomenine was significantly better than that of placebo." Said Draulio de Araujo, a neuroscientist at the Federal University of North Rio Grande Shaman is making rattan water for traditional rituals (source: lunae parracho / Reuters / Corbis)
    In the Amazon jungle of South America, the dead rattan water made by the shaman of the native Indian tribe is a dark brown potion Theoretically, this kind of liquid medicine has potential antidepressant effect, because it contains components that can regulate neurotransmitter serotonin, and the abnormal serotonin effect is considered as an important basis for the occurrence of depression, N-dimethyltryptamine can bind to serotonin receptor Other components, such as harmine, tetrahydroharmine and harmaline, may inhibit monoamine oxidase A and block the effect of some neurotransmitters In order to test the potential antidepressant effect of sinomenine, draulio de Araujo and his team carefully selected patients who had never tried Wisteria or other psychedelic drugs as control groups The team brewed a dark brown drink that was almost unreadable in order to convince the control group that they had taken the same medicine One day before taking the medicine, the patients who participated in the experiment filled in the standard questionnaire to evaluate their depression symptoms The next day, they spent eight hours in a quiet environment, where they took placebo and Wisteria water respectively, and patients who took it had hallucinations within four hours Then they filled in a new questionnaire the next day and the following week The next day after the treatment, both groups reported improvement in depression symptoms, and the placebo group scored higher than the patients taking sinomenine But an assessment a week later showed that 64% of those who took the water thought their depression was 50% or more worse, compared with 27% of those in the placebo group A tribal shaman in Ecuador is collecting plants to make dead rattan water (source: Wade Davis) Professor David mischoulon of Massachusetts General Hospital said: "the results of this study show that patients can quickly benefit from this magical 'antidepressant' at least in the short term But we need to follow patients for a longer period of time to see if these positive effects continue " Professor Charles Grob of UCLA said: "at present, there are about 350 million people suffering from depression around the world, and one third to one fifth of them have not improved after taking standard antidepressants For those who do not respond well to conventional treatment of depression, this ancient herbal medicine may really help in the future " The study is part of a resurgence of studies on the potential efficacy of hallucinogens or recreational drugs, which were banned or restricted on a large scale half a century ago At present, scientists have found that ketamine, once used as an anaesthetic in medicine, is expected to become an antidepressant drug; the hallucinogen gymnopsin can alleviate anxiety in patients with advanced cancer
    Journal reference: bioRxiv, DOI:10.1101/103531
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