Magic mushrooms used to treat depression

The psychedelic compound of magic mushrooms, psilocybin, has been used to lift depression in volunteers of a pilot study

Researchers from Imperial College London (ICL) completed the pilot study, funded by Medical Research Council, to investigate if psilocybin could be used to treat depression resistant to current therapies.

The ICL researchers found that the magic mushroom compound can be safely administered with appropriate support and used to treat people suffering from types of depression that had been resistant to prior treatments.

However, hallucinogenics such as psilocybin can cause unpleasant reactions, including anxiety and paranoia, so the study aimed to assess safety and whether a potential treatment dose of psilocybin could be tolerated.

To investigate the safety and feasibility of using psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression, researchers from ICL conducted a strictly monitored feasibility study.

As this was not a randomised-controlled trial, the patients knew they were receiving the drug and there was no control group to provide comparison either with existing treatments or with no treatment at all.

12 people with moderate to severe treatment-resistant depression who had not responded to at least two courses of antidepressants were recruited (six men and six women, aged 30-64).

The patients received Home Office-approved psilocybin capsules during two dosing sessions seven days apart.

The psilocybin was administered to the participants at a research facility and there was a follow-up with patients the next day and then one, two, three and five weeks after the second dosing session.

No serious unexpected side effects were reported during the study and all patients showed some decrease in symptoms of depression for at least three weeks, according to ICL. Seven of them continued to show a positive response three months after the treatment, with five remaining in remission after three months.

Louise Jones, head of translational research at the Medical Research Council, said: “We currently don’t have effective treatments for some people’s depression so we need to know more about how drugs such as psilocybin could be used for patient benefit.

“This study showed that, with appropriate safeguards, psilocybin can be safely administered to some patients with treatment-resistant depression. It will now be important to undertake studies that evaluate its role as a potential treatment.”

The study was published in The Lancet Psychiatry and the results could pave the way for future randomised-controlled trials to establish the efficacy of the compound in treating this form of depression, according to ICL.