Li Ren and colleagues at Chongqing Medical University conducted a randomized clinical trial and found that intravenous infusion of esketamine during cesarean section almost halved the incidence of postpartum depression. The study involved 308 pregnant women scheduled for cesarean section. Half of them (mean age 31.57 years) received an infusion of 0.25 milligrams of esketamine per kilogram of body weight over 20 minutes during the procedure, while the other half (mean age 32.53 years) received a placebo. The results were published in the journal JAMA Network Open.
It turned out that in the sixth week after delivery, the incidence of postnatal depression according to the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) in the main group was significantly lower than in the control group: 10.4 versus 19.5 percent. The risk ratio (RR) was 0.53 (95 percent confidence interval 0.30–0.93; p = 0.02).