The safety of repeated ketamine dosing in paediatrics: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Ketamine is emerging as an effective, rapidly acting antidepressant in adult research. Hypothetical concerns about its long-term safety and impact on the developing brain are limiting its research in children. However, a wealth of paediatric safety and dosing data exists for ketamine, given its extensive use globally as an anaesthetic, analgesic and sedative agent. AIMS: To evaluate the safety of repeat dosing of ketamine in children. METHODS: A systematic search of EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library and PubMed from inception to 13 April 2023 was conducted. Included studies were those reporting adverse events when ketamine was given repeatedly to children aged 5-18, for any condition. No language restrictions were applied. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guideline and Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Appraisal Tools Checklist for study quality assessment were used. The review process was performed independently by two reviewers. RESULTS: Five observational studies (87 patients) were included. The maximum number of doses per patient was 42, over a maximum of 4 months. There were no serious adverse events. There was no evidence of needing higher doses with time to indicate tolerance. The longest follow-up period was 6 months. There were no long-term consequences (including neurocognitive) reported within this time frame. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that, despite methodological limitations of the studies, ketamine is well tolerated and safe for use in children, even when given repeatedly in regimens analogous to those used for the treatment of depression in adults. This finding supports the expansion of research into the use of ketamine as a novel antidepressant in children.

Fifteen-minute consultation in the normal child: Challenges relating to sexuality and gender identity in children and young people.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) young people face several challenges in their daily lives, including specific healthcare inequalities. Negative societal attitudes towards sexual and gender minorities, and the effects of regular experiences of bullying and homophobia/transphobia exacerbate the normal trials and tribulations of childhood and adolescence. Barriers to accessing healthy activities, such as sport, are created by perceived stigma and real-life experiences. Healthcare environments are by default heteronormative and contribute to the isolation and exclusion of LGBT+ young people. Paediatricians are well placed to act on these healthcare inequalities and to advocate for LGBT+ youth, through simple changes to individual practice as well as system-wide improvements.

Gender differences in the relationship between social communication and emotion recognition.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the association between autistic traits and emotion recognition in a large community sample of children using facial and social motion cues, additionally stratifying by gender. METHOD: A general population sample of 3,666 children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) were assessed on their ability to correctly recognize emotions using the faces subtest of the Diagnostic Analysis of Non-Verbal Accuracy, and the Emotional Triangles Task, a novel test assessing recognition of emotion from social motion cues. Children with autistic-like social communication difficulties, as assessed by the Social Communication Disorders Checklist, were compared with children without such difficulties. RESULTS: Autistic-like social communication difficulties were associated with poorer recognition of emotion from social motion cues in both genders, but were associated with poorer facial emotion recognition in boys only (odds ratio = 1.9, 95% CI = 1.4, 2.6, p = .0001). This finding must be considered in light of lower power to detect differences in girls. CONCLUSIONS: In this community sample of children, greater deficits in social communication skills are associated with poorer discrimination of emotions, implying there may be an underlying continuum of liability to the association between these characteristics. As a similar degree of association was observed in both genders on a novel test of social motion cues, the relatively good performance of girls on the more familiar task of facial emotion discrimination may be due to compensatory mechanisms. Our study might indicate the existence of a cognitive process by which girls with underlying autistic traits can compensate for their covert deficits in emotion recognition, although this would require further investigation.