Exploring Ketamine's Antimicrobial Effects & Fungal Sources: Part 2

As science unravels ketamine’s mechanisms of action to better understand its efficacy as an antidepressant, its antibacterial activity has been probed at the same time. Current research has found a naturally-occurring, fungal origin for the drug, exhibiting antiparasitic properties. The current onslaught of research into ketamine’s therapeutic potential has led researchers to consider other applications for the drug, precipitating a rediscovery of older literature and a greater appreciation for the newer work espousing its antimicrobial benefits. Despite much elaboration on pharmacology and potential mechanisms of action, this work remains widely unknown. As discussed in Part 1, the serendipitous discovery at New York’s Montefiore Hospital that the NMDA antagonist cycloserine unanticipatedly improved moods in tuberculosis patients foreshadowed the utility that other NMDA blockers like ketamine may hold as antidepressants. Understanding further the mechanisms by which ketamine exerts its action has lead to refined models of its binding at the level of the NMDA receptor and its many subunits; NMDAR activation requires the concerted activity of neurotransmitters glycine and glutamate, and the amino acid serine, at specific subunits of the receptor, namely GLUN1A and GLUN2A.