FDA Panel Recommends This New Drug To Manage Depression

As per the recent reports, a new experimental nasal spray which is said to have a compound that is quite similar to ketamine, has just been recommended by one of the advisory panels to the FDA, as a new treatment for depression. The panel voted 14-2 in the favor of the company Johnson & Johnson which has made this drug named esketamine, and this is said to help in the treatment that is developed to treat high levels of depression in some of the patients that have not been benefited despite taking multiple therapies.

While there are some minor risks involved with the drug, the panel said that these are easily outweighed by the benefits of the same. The side effects of this particular drug include nausea, dizziness, along with some unpleasant feeling of dissociation, as per the company’s statement. One of the members in the entire panel abstained from taking part in the voting process.

Some people are saying that this drug might be a game-changer when it comes to the treatment of the problem and therefore they have decided to vote for the same in the panel meeting. However, it is also being said that many things such as the issues of the cost as well as the patient accessibility must be well taken care of beforehand, in order to be effective.

This nasal spray acts very quickly and the benefits are observed by the patients in a time span of nearly four hours. This nasal spray is expected to work well for the people with severe depression and those which do not respond that well to the antidepressants. It is expected to take nearly four weeks for the effects to be seen, after the usage of the spray. The FDA has approved very few drugs when it comes to the treatment of depression.