Substance Misuse To Psychosis for Ketamine (SToP-K)

Evidence suggests that repeated or chronic ketamine use, as compared to acute ketamine users, posed a higher clinical risk of developing psychotic disorders, potentially related to the underlying chronic N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) dysfunction, and a higher risk of suffering from schizophrenia particularly in those genetically susceptible, or genetically predisposed ketamine abusers. With ketamine infusion rises as a emerging hope as an acute treatment for depression and suicidality under the shadow of unknown longer term psychotomimetic effects peculiarly amongst repeated or chronic use, the current case-control study aims to investigate: a) if repeated or chronic ketamine use is associated with an increased risk of psychosis by comparing those ketamine abusers with and without psychosis, and to those non-ketamine-using drug abusers with psychosis; and b) if genetic predisposition from single nucleotide polymorphisms are associated with risk of psychosis in ketamine abusers.