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Abuse of the dissociative anesthetic ketamine can lead to a syndrome indistinguishable from schizophrenia. In animals, repetitive exposure to this N-methyl-d-aspartate-receptor antagonist induces the dysfunction of a subset of cortical fast-spiking inhibitory interneurons, with loss of expression of parvalbumin and the gamma-aminobutyric acid-producing enzyme GAD67. We show here that exposure of mice to ketamine induced a persistent increase in brain superoxide due to activation in neurons of reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) oxidase. Decreasing superoxide production prevented the effects of ketamine on inhibitory interneurons in the prefrontal cortex. These results suggest that NADPH oxidase may represent a novel target for the treatment of ketamine-induced psychosis.
Behrens et al. (Thu,) studied this question.