Psychedelic Compound in Toad Venom Can Treat Depression When Snorted, Scientists Find

Shutterstock / Futurism In the late 1980s and early 90s, sensational reports of a “toad licking” fad spread like wildfire throughout North and South America. The stories — aided in no small part by harrowing advisories from the US Drug Enforcement Administration — told of an epidemic of teens licking toads in order to ingest compounds secreted by the animals, most notably bufotenine, an alkaloid compound with psychedelic effects. How widespread this phenomenon actually was in practice is difficult to say. Contemporary media analysis found that tales of rampant toad-tonguing spread through a game of academic telephone, which was quickly picked up by mainstream media. As all media frenzies do, the supposed drug epidemic quickly fell off the radar, and psychedelic toads became something of an obscure proverb known mainly to drug researchers. Decades later, however, ongoing research into the substances secreted by the amphibians seems to have led to an actual breakthrough, in the form of a single-dose nasal spray meant to treat severe cases of depression. As ScienceAlert reports, researchers at the Eli Lilly subsidiary AtaiBeckley recently concluded clinical trials around mebufotenin, one of the active psychedelic compounds found in the venom of the Sonoran Desert toad. Per their findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, doses of mebufotenin spray demonstrated “potential as an effective, well-tolerated therapy for treatment-resistant depression with a rapid recovery time.” The findings come via a double-blind randomized clinical trial involving 193 adults with treatment-resistant depression, which is characterized by the Cleveland Clinic as major depressive disorder which persists following at least two different antidepressant treatments. Overall, the researchers found that eight and 12 milligram doses of toad spray resulted in significantly reduced scores on a standard depression test, with only mild to moderate side-effects. Even more promising is the fact that those positive effects held for weeks after a single dose. “Single-day dosing with mebufotenin appears to be effective for postpartum depression — and now for difficult-to-treat depression — and the benefits are sustained with or without re-treatment for eight days to six months,” psychopharmacology researcher Chittaranjan Andrade told ScienceAlert. Still, Andrade isn’t convinced that toad secretions are the holy grail of antidepressants, at least based on this clinical trial, which — while being the largest study yet of mebufotenin as a nasal spray — still has key limitations. “The average patient became only about 30 percent better,” Andrade explained in his own editorial, “and the response and remission rates were below those typically seen, for example, with ketamine and electroconvulsive therapy.” “Patients with difficult-to-treat depression require long-term maintenance treatment,” Andrade continued, “but because mebufotenin was examined as monotherapy, the trial offers no insight on when and how the transition to a conventional antidepressant should be made or whether mebufotenin itself might be used for maintenance.” More on treatments: Chinese Scientists Develop Muscle Grafts That Can Be Injected Straight Under the Skin