Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Nov 19, 2021; 11(11): 981-996
Published online Nov 19, 2021. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v11.i11.981
Agmatine as a novel candidate for rapid-onset antidepressant response
Ana Paula Valverde, Anderson Camargo, Ana Lúcia S Rodrigues
Ana Paula Valverde, Anderson Camargo, Ana Lúcia S Rodrigues, Department of Biochemistry, Campus Universitário, Center for Biological Sciences, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, SC 88040900, Brazil
Author contributions: All the authors performed the literature search and wrote the manuscript.
Supported by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, No. 310113/2017-2; and the CNPq Research Productivity Fellowship.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ana Lúcia S Rodrigues, PhD, Full Professor, Department of Biochemistry, Campus Universitário, Center for Biological Sciences, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, SC 88040900, Brazil. alsrodri@gmail.com
Received: March 2, 2021
Peer-review started: March 2, 2021
First decision: June 5, 2021
Revised: June 9, 2021
Accepted: August 23, 2021
Article in press: August 23, 2021
Published online: November 19, 2021
Processing time: 260 Days and 0.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: One of the main challenges in the advancement of antidepressant therapy is the establishment of safe and effective fast-acting antidepressants. Ketamine is a prototype for rapid-onset antidepressant responses. Agmatine has been shown to produce fast antidepressant-like effect by stimulating mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 signaling pathway, similar to ketamine. Moreover, NLR family pyrin domain containing 3 and microbiota-gut-brain axis may be novel targets for fast antidepressant responses. These targets have also been postulated to play a role in the antidepressant effect of both ketamine and agmatine.