Depressed patients treated with hallucinogenic mushrooms show reduced symptoms of their disease and increased brain activity soon after starting treatment, according to the reports. results of a study published in the medical journal Nature.
Researchers at Imperial College London in the UK have used psilocybin – the psychoactive compound found naturally in hallucinogenic mushrooms – to treat a small number of patients with depression in whom conventional treatment had failed.
20 patients with treatment-resistant disease received two doses of psilocybin (10 mg and 25 mg), the second dose one week after the first.
Nineteen of them underwent an initial brain imaging and then a second scan a day after the high dose treatment. Immediately after treatment with psilocybin, patients reported a decrease in depressive symptoms, characterized by improvements in mood and relief of pain. stress.
The beneficial effects of psilocybin therapy
The conclusions of their trials seem to provide evidence of the benefit of this type of treatment.
Indeed, comparison of images of patients’ brains before and after receiving drug treatment revealed changes in brain activity that were associated with marked and lasting reductions in blood pressure. depressive symptoms.
Indeed, the researchers report the benefits described by patients up to five weeks after treatment, and believe that the psychedelic compound may indeed reset the activity of key brain circuits known to play a role in depression.
“We showed for the first time clear changes in brain activity in depressed people treated with psilocybin after failing to respond to conventional treatments,” says Robin Carhart-Harris, director of psychedelic research at Imperial College .
The authors recall that the initial results of the experimental therapy are interesting, but they are limited by the small size of the sample, as well as by the absence of a control group. New studies must be set up to confirm these preliminary results. They also insist that self-medication with hallucinogenic mushrooms is not recommended.
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