Ketamine’s pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic interactions with anticonvulsants, and their implications for psychiatry: A scoping review protocol

ABSTRACT Considering the ever-increasing use of ketamine as a rapid-acting and efficacious agent for difficult-to-treat affective disorders, it is paramount that clinicians understand pharmacological interactions between ketamine and other drugs commonly used in unipolar and bipolar depression. Anticonvulsants appear of particular interest in this context, as some (valproate, lamotrigine, carbamazepine, pregabalin, gabapentin) are widely employed as mood-stabilisers and/or anxiolytics, while others are still commonly encountered due to the significant comorbidity between affective disorders and epilepsy. This is the protocol for a scoping review aiming to comprehensively collect evidence regarding pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic interactions between ketamine (and its enantiomers) and anticonvulsants. Our review was designed in accordance with the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, ProQuest and ClinicalTrials.gov will be searched for relevant papers. Primary and non-primary research of any design will be included to ensure comprehensiveness. All data will be synthetised and presented in narrative form. We anticipate that our results will provide useful insight for clinicians and highlight gaps in knowledge that may be explored in future research.