What To Read This Week
1. Psilocybin Produced “Marked Improvements” For Cancer Patients Battling Clinical Depression.
New study finds psilocybin-assisted therapy produces “marked improvements in psycho-social-spiritual wellbeing” of cancer patients with clinical depression:
“A cancer diagnosis can have a devastating effect on physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being… Many cancer patients experience clinical depression and anxiety…a debilitating fear of dying, disconnectedness, lack of control, and loss of hope… Yet, traditional pharmacotherapeutics have mixed and limited efficacy in treating cancer-related distress…… In more recent clinical trials, psilocybin was found to promote significant and substantial improvements in cancer-related depression, anxiety, existential distress, and orientation towards death … This study aimed to evaluate changes [in] psycho-social-spiritual wellbeing in response to psilocybin treatment [as measured by a diagnostic tool designed by the National Institute of Health] … In this study, cancer patients with depression experienced marked improvements in psycho-social-spiritual wellbeing following psilocybin-assisted therapy, as assessed by the NIH [diagnostic tool]. [Moreover, these results were] sustained up to the last study interval at 8 weeks”
NBC News spotlights one of the study participants; a Maryland father who says psilocybin helped him battle the debilitating depression that followed his stage four colon cancer diagnosis. Watch the full video here:
Related: The Toronto Star recently reported on a woman who tried psilocybin-assisted therapy when, “after being told she only had two years to live in 2021 [following a] stage-four breast cancer [diagnosis] she entered a state of emotional paralysis, unable to think of anything but death. But that fear of dying vanished after [she] tried psilocybin therapy under the supervision of a specially trained therapist.” As the woman told the newspaper: “I am living more fully than I ever have in my life.”
2. Two New Psychedelic Medicines Research Centers To Launch:
“Baylor College of Medicine is launching a new program to explore Ethical and Legal Implications of Psychedelics In Society.” The university announced that “as part of the new program, experts will outline policies and ethical guidelines for psychedelic research, examine legal implications of psychedelic use for medical care, measure psychosocial impacts of psychedelic research and help to train the next generation of scholars interested in ethical and policy issues related to psychedelics.” The program’s director, Dr. Amy McGuire, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, said the center “hope[s] to be a catalyst for research in this space and to become leaders in helping create ethical guidelines and policies for psychedelics that are evidence-based, scientifically rigorous and equity-enhancing.”
“UC Davis Establishes Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics.”
The university explained that the center is necessary because “psychedelics are among the most powerful substances known to impact brain function. Their unique properties have led to their clinical investigation as treatments for a wide variety of brain disorders including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance use disorder, among many others. Psychedelics produce effects on brain function that last long after the compounds have been cleared from the body, and thus, represent an enormous opportunity to heal damaged neural circuitry and produce lasting benefits for patients.”
The center’s director, Dr. David Olson, said that psychedelic medicines contain compounds that “actually have the ability to heal the brain, not simply treat disease symptoms.” He continued: “[I]f you could peer into the brains of people with depression PTSD and substance use disorder you might be surprised by what you find all of these illnesses and many other neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by the atrophy of neurons and key parts of the brain that regulate motivation fear reward and cognition … Our group has been studying [how psychedelic medicines can] act like Miracle Grow for the brain and because of their ability to regrow these critical neurons.”
Related: The new centers at Baylor and the University of California-Davis will join existing centers for psychedelic medicine related research at UCLA, UC-Berkeley, UC-San Francisco, Johns Hopkins University, New York University, and the University of Texas–Austin.
3. “Psychedelics are a Promising Therapy, But They Can Be Dangerous For Some … Here’s What To Know About Who Should Be Cautious.”
Writing for The New York Times, Dana Smith, cautions that like all promising medical innovations, psychedelics are a tool not a panacea:
“Psychedelics have an extremely low chance of lethal overdose and there is little likelihood of addiction. As a result, they have been classified by experts as some of the least harmful recreational drugs. But that doesn’t mean they are entirely without risk. Because of this, psilocybin trials and ketamine clinics have strict exclusion criteria to try to protect people who have physical or psychological vulnerabilities.” [Moreover] “experts who study these substances strongly urge that people only use them in supervised therapeutic settings, such as in a clinical trial or at an established ketamine clinic, partly because of [these] safety concerns and partly because they are illegal outside of these confines.”
The New York Times highlights three specific considerations to guide the question of who should not use psychedelic medicine:
“Serious psychiatric disorders … experts say the risk of psychedelics triggering a psychotic or manic episode is likely elevated for people who have a personal or family history of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Consequently, people with these histories are excluded from psilocybin clinical trials and treatment at ketamine clinic.”
“Cardiovascular concerns … experts do know that psilocybin and ketamine raise blood pressure and heart rate, so out of an abundance of caution, people with heart conditions, such as uncontrolled high blood pressure, heart disease and arrhythmias, are advised not to take them. [That said,] during carefully monitored clinical trials, where dosage is supervised and patients are screened, the drugs “appear to be safe from a cardiac standpoint,” [according to] Dr. Jeremy Ruskin, a professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital who specializes in cardiology.”
Possible interactions with other prescription medications … “psilocybin clinical trials typically require participants to go off their antidepressants first….For ketamine, the biggest risk is taking it while you’re also on drugs that depress the central nervous system, like opiates, muscle relaxants or benzodiazepines, because those medications could enhance or prolong ketamine’s sedative effect. Finally, although the general risk for dependence on psychedelics is extremely low, for ketamine it is not nonexistent.”
Related: The concerns raised by the New York Times are why both Colorado and Oregon formed expert advisory boards to help regulators craft guardrails to ensure safe and effective access to psychedelic medicines like pre-therapy safety screenings; rigorous training for treatment facilitators; and strict safety and testing guidelines for manufacturing psychedelic medicines.
