Li Ren and colleagues from Chongqing Medical University conducted a randomized clinical trial and found that intravenous esketamine infusion during cesarean section nearly 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; the other half (mean age 32.53 years) received a placebo. The results were published in JAMA Network Open.
It was found that at the sixth week after delivery, the incidence of postnatal depression according to the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) was significantly lower in the study group than in the control group: 10.4 percent versus 19.5 percent. The odds ratio (RR) was 0.53 (95 percent confidence interval 0.30–0.93; p = 0.02).
