Psychedelics, like psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms), have been touted as a treatment for everything from anxiety to depression, and addiction to PTSD – the anecdotal evidence has been around for decades, with countless numbers of people swearing by its benefits. We now wait with bated breath for the science to catch up and hopefully bring us to a new future for mental health treatment.
Because the clinical trial process for most companies is still in Phase 2, with the larger Phase 3 trials a year or more away, it’s up to independent medical studies to fill the gap and help shift the scientific consensus. And last week, the psychedelic medicine industry received some very good news.
Run at the prestigious Imperial College London and published in the New England Journal of Medicine – the gold standard of medical journals – we now have the results of the first-ever randomized controlled trial comparing psilocybin with traditional antidepressants (SSRI), and they are extremely impressive.
The official conclusion of the paper was a tad conservative, as the study’s main measure of psilocybin versus traditional SSRIs came out only slightly better in favor of mushrooms (a potential consequence of the very small sample size). But that was the only result to not drop some jaws and knock off a few socks.
“The results of the primary outcome look anomalous in relation to the other measures reported in the trial,” said Robin Carhart-Harris the study’s designer and head of the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, in an interview with Forbes. “It was virtually the only measure in nearly 20 that didn’t significantly favor psilocybin.”
Here’s a brief look at some of the results:
- 70% of patients had positive response rates on psilocybin after 6 weeks (greater than 50% reduction in depression measures) compared to just 48% in the SSRI group.
- 57% of patients in the psilocybin group were defined to be in remission from depression after 6 weeks (no more significant signs of depressive symptoms). On its own this would be great news, giving us some science to back up the claim that psilocybin can be extremely effective in treating major depression. However, it gets even more impressive when compared to the SSRI group, which had only 28% of patients in remission.
- Using another common scale to measure depression symptoms, the psilocybin group had 50% of patients in remission after 6 weeks versus only 10% who took the SSRI. Another very significant difference.
- Additionally, the study looked at over a dozen other secondary outcomes such as suicidal thoughts and other measures of depressive symptoms such as the ability to feel pleasure, and the psilocybin group performed better than the traditional medication in every single case.
This news comes on the heels of another positive study released in November by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. This controlled trial for treating major depressive disorder (MDD) with synthetic psilocybin found that 71 percent of patients experienced clinically significant responses at least four weeks after treatment, with 54 percent meeting the criteria for total remission of depression. Impressive and another win for team shroom boom.
The medical community is by nature conservative, and the trials must be replicated with much bigger sample sizes; but still, the results are very impressive, match the anecdotal reports, and will go a long way in legitimizing psychedelics in the mind of the mainstream community.
(Side note for Compass Pathways fans and investors, the psilocybin used in last week’s trial was Compass Pathways’ COMP360 compound. A potentially positive bit of information as Compass tries to be the first to market for treating depression.)
Psychedelics, like psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms), have been touted as a treatment for everything from anxiety to depression, and addiction to PTSD – the anecdotal evidence has been around for decades, with countless numbers of people swearing by its benefits. We now wait with bated breath for the science to catch up and hopefully bring us to a new future for mental health treatment.
Because the clinical trial process for most companies is still in Phase 2, with the larger Phase 3 trials a year or more away, it’s up to independent medical studies to fill the gap and help shift the scientific consensus. And last week, the psychedelic medicine industry received some very good news.
Run at the prestigious Imperial College London and published in the New England Journal of Medicine – the gold standard of medical journals – we now have the results of the first-ever randomized controlled trial comparing psilocybin with traditional antidepressants (SSRI), and they are extremely impressive.
The official conclusion of the paper was a tad conservative, as the study’s main measure of psilocybin versus traditional SSRIs came out only slightly better in favor of mushrooms (a potential consequence of the very small sample size). But that was the only result to not drop some jaws and knock off a few socks.
“The results of the primary outcome look anomalous in relation to the other measures reported in the trial,” said Robin Carhart-Harris the study’s designer and head of the Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, in an interview with Forbes. “It was virtually the only measure in nearly 20 that didn’t significantly favor psilocybin.”
Here’s a brief look at some of the results:
- 70% of patients had positive response rates on psilocybin after 6 weeks (greater than 50% reduction in depression measures) compared to just 48% in the SSRI group.
- 57% of patients in the psilocybin group were defined to be in remission from depression after 6 weeks (no more significant signs of depressive symptoms). On its own this would be great news, giving us some science to back up the claim that psilocybin can be extremely effective in treating major depression. However, it gets even more impressive when compared to the SSRI group, which had only 28% of patients in remission.
- Using another common scale to measure depression symptoms, the psilocybin group had 50% of patients in remission after 6 weeks versus only 10% who took the SSRI. Another very significant difference.
- Additionally, the study looked at over a dozen other secondary outcomes such as suicidal thoughts and other measures of depressive symptoms such as the ability to feel pleasure, and the psilocybin group performed better than the traditional medication in every single case.
This news comes on the heels of another positive study released in November by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. This controlled trial for treating major depressive disorder (MDD) with synthetic psilocybin found that 71 percent of patients experienced clinically significant responses at least four weeks after treatment, with 54 percent meeting the criteria for total remission of depression. Impressive and another win for team shroom boom.
The medical community is by nature conservative, and the trials must be replicated with much bigger sample sizes; but still, the results are very impressive, match the anecdotal reports, and will go a long way in legitimizing psychedelics in the mind of the mainstream community.
(Side note for Compass Pathways fans and investors, the psilocybin used in last week’s trial was Compass Pathways’ COMP360 compound. A potentially positive bit of information as Compass tries to be the first to market for treating depression.)