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

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][1] 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. ### Competing Interest Statement HCS, DS and PC have no conflict of interest to declare. In the last 3 years: RS declares an honorarium from Lundbeck. AHY declares honoraria for speaking from Astra Zeneca, Lundbeck, Eli Lilly, Sunovion; honoraria for consulting from Allergan, Livanova and Lundbeck, Sunovion, Janssen; and research grant support from Janssen. MFJ declares honoraria for speaking from Janssen, Lundbeck, EMS and Daiichi Sankyo; honoraria for consulting from Janssen and Lundbeck; and research grant support from Lundbeck and Heptares Therapeutics. ### Funding Statement The authors state no funding was involved for this research. ### Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable. Yes All data produced in the present work are contained in the manuscript. [1]: http://ClinicalTrials.gov