Speakers

Biography

Felipe Paes Gomes da Silva has been a medical student at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUC-PR) since 2019/2. I have had the privilege of serving as the president of the Research Center (NUPEC) of IFMSA Brazil (International Federation of Medical Students Association - Brazil) and working as a monitor in Medical Immunology. Currently, I am a student in the Experimental Pathology Laboratory research group of the Pontifical University Catholic Church of Paraná (PUC-PR). My interests lie in Psychiatry, Neurology, Pathology, and Immunogenetics. I have authored four articles, all published in international journals, and have 43 citations, with an H index of 2. I have presented at the International Congress by Neurology in Paris and eight other congresses in Brazil, earning the third position award in the largest congress of students in the south of Brazil. Congress of students in the south of Brazil.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) has as diagnostics characteristics chronic deep sadness, anhedonia, sleeping disorder, lower energy, and cognition impairment like memory deficits. Among the pharmacological treatments that have been used until now, most of them act by monoaminergic pathways. Overall, the antidepressant effects promoted by this kind of medication usually delay starting, resulting in treatment resistance by the patients; moreover, in some cases, this kind of treatment has shown to be inefficient in depression remission. With this, new medicines have been studied for resistant cases and an immediate antidepressant effect, for example, ketamine – whose action occurs in glutamatergic pathways. This study aimed to analyze, from a literature review, the molecular mechanisms involved in the action of ketamine - focusing on the neuroplastic hypothesis of depression.
METHODS: A literature search was conducted in PubMed, MEDLINE, and SciELO databases using the following terms as descriptors: "ketamine AND
depression AND Neuroplasticity," with criterion PICO, resulting in 60 bibliographic texts.
RESULTS/DISCUSSION: The studies analyzed demonstrated that ketamine could exert its antidepressant effects through the inhibition of GABAergic interneurons, activation of TRK-B/AKT/mTORC pathways involved with cell survival/growth through the neurotrophine BDNF, and increased activation of AMPAr by glutamate. Furthermore, it is evident that the pharmacodynamics of ketamine involves different molecular cascades present in the impaired neural
plasticity pathways in individuals with MDD.
CONCLUSION: Thus, more research on the effectiveness of ketamine is needed to consolidate its use in MDD and to evolve with glutamatergic pharmacological therapy for other mental disorders, such as bipolar and neurodegenerative affective disorders, an example of Alzheimer's disease.