Wednesday, September 10, 2025

Depression remission endures 5 years after psilocybin trial

Study suggests psychedelic-assisted therapy has long-term benefits

Ohio State University

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Two-thirds of clinical trial participants treated with psilocybin-assisted therapy for major depressive disorder were in complete remission from their depression five years later, a new study has found.

The study involved participants from a clinical trial published in 2021 that found psilocybin (the primary psychedelic substance in magic mushrooms) combined with psychotherapy in adults was effective at treating major depressive disorder.

An average of five years after the clinical trial, a majority of participants reported lasting depression remission as well as improvement in a range of well-being measures.

“We found that 67% were in remission at five years compared to 58% at one year. We also saw that across the board, anxiety, depression, global functioning, self-reported depression, all of these measures were showing the same signal of continued improvement up to five years later,” said lead author Alan Davis, associate professor and director of the Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education (CPDRE) in The Ohio State University College of Social Work.

“Five years later, most people continued to view this treatment as safe, meaningful, important, and something that catalyzed an ongoing betterment of their life,” said Davis, who co-led the 2021 trial at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s important for us to understand the details of what comes after treatment. I think this is a sign that regardless of what the outcomes are, their lives were improved because they participated in something like this.”

The follow-up results were published Sept. 4 in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies.

In the original trial, two participant groups – one receiving treatment right away and another on a wait-list treatment condition – received two doses of psilocybin combined with about 13 hours of psychotherapy. Overall, the participants experienced a significant and large reduction in depression symptoms, with half reporting remission from depression up to one year after the trial.

Of the 24 participants, 18 enrolled in the five-year follow-up, which consisted of a range of online questionnaires assessing depression, anxiety and functional impairment; a clinician-administered depression rating; and interviews to capture nuances of outcomes beyond the quantitative measures.

In analyzing data at the five-year time point, researchers conservatively estimated that those who didn’t participate in the follow-up had experienced complete relapse and had returned to their pre-treatment levels of functioning.

“Even controlling for those baseline estimates from the people who didn’t participate in the long-term follow-up, we still see a very large and significant reduction in depression symptoms,” said Davis, who also holds faculty positions in internal medicine and psychology at Ohio State. “That was really exciting for us because this showed that the number of participants still in complete remission from their depression had gone up slightly.”

The depression remission cannot be attributed solely to the 2021 trial treatment, the findings suggest. Only three participants in the follow-up had reported no depression-related treatment since the trial. Others reported taking antidepressant medications, trying psychedelics or ketamine treatment, or undergoing psychotherapy.

The follow-up interviews revealed context around those decisions to seek therapy, Davis said. Before the psilocybin-assisted therapy, these patients lived with debilitating depression that interfered with their capacity to engage in life. After the trial, many described perceiving depression as more situational and manageable.

“They believed that overall, they had greater capacity for positive emotions and enthusiasm, regardless of whether their depression came back or not. A lot of folks reported that these shifts led to important changes in how they related to their experiences of depression,” Davis said.

A few of the people who had tried psychedelics on their own in the intervening years reported that the experiences were not as helpful because of the lack of a clinical support framework. This notion supports findings from another study Davis and colleagues conducted with the clinical trial group – that when it comes to reducing depression with psychedelic-assisted therapy, what matters even more than the drug is a strong relationship between the therapist and study participant.

At the five-year time point, 11 participants reported no adverse effects since the clinical trial. In looking back, three recalled they felt unprepared for the heightened emotional sensitivity that came with the psychedelic treatment, two said pre-trial weaning off medications and being on the waitlist was very difficult, and two believed integration therapy would have been helpful after the initial study.

Acknowledging the study sample is small, Davis said there is still a lot to learn – but that this first look at the durability of the effects of psilocybin-assisted therapy offers a glimpse at the potential lasting positive effects of the treatment.

“We believe that these data suggest that there is long-term efficacy with people who undergo these treatments,” they said. “Some of the most debilitating aspects of depression are people isolating and withdrawing from things that are important to them. Despite some of those symptoms coming back, they found they weren’t experiencing those same levels of impairment – that really speaks to the potential for some people that this treatment might catalyze future positive effects when they’re going through depression.”

This study was supported by the CPDRE at Ohio State, and the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University, where Davis was an adjunct assistant professor at the time of the study.

Co-authors included Meghan DellaCrosse, Nathan Sepeda, Adam Levin, Hillary Shaub, Peter Gooch, Shoval Gilead, Skylar Gaughan and Stacey Armstrong of Ohio State, and Mary Cosimano, Taylor Washington and Frederick Barrett of Johns Hopkins.

Contact: Alan Davis, Davis.5996@osu.edu

Written by Emily Caldwell, Caldwell.151@osu.edu; 614-292-8152

Journal

Journal of Psychedelic Studies

DOI

10.1556/2054.2025.00461

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Five-year outcomes of psilocybin-assisted therapy for Major Depressive Disorder

Article Publication Date

7-Sep-2025

Rising heat waves tied to fossil fuel and cement production

ETH Zurich

In brief:

A new study demonstrates that human-induced climate change increased the likelihood and intensity of over 200 global heat waves between 2000 and 2023.

Emissions associated with each of the 180 largest producers of fossil fuels and cement have contributed substantially to the occurrence of these events.

These findings have significant implications for questions of climate policy and corporate accountability.

Last June, large parts of Europe experienced unprecedented heat. In July, the Mediterranean region groaned under the scorching heat, with locals and tourists suffering temperatures well above 40°C (104°F). In August, parched forests burned in many places. Around the world, a trend of record-breaking extreme heat is affecting our health and disrupting our economies.

The perception that current heat waves exceed those of previous generations now has scientific backing, thanks to research led by ETH Zurich Professor, Sonia Seneviratne. The study, just published in the journal, Nature documents how human-induced climate change has increased the frequency and severity of more than 200 heat waves.

In their study, the research team looked at 213 heat waves that occurred on all seven of Earth’s continents between 2000 and 2023. The study included all heat waves that were reported by authorities or the media due to significant casualties, economic losses, or calls for international assistance. Africa and South America were significantly underrepresented in the study, however, due to underreporting and lack of usable data from these regions.

Climate change makes heat waves more likely – and increasingly severe

Nevertheless, the trend is clear. “Climate change has made each of these heat waves more likely and more intense, and the situation has worsened over time,” says lead author Yann Quilcaille, a postdoctoral researcher in Seneviratne’s research group. In terms of figures, this means that global warming made heatwaves 20 times more likely between 2000 and 2009, and as much as 200 times more likely between 2010 and 2019, compared with the period between 1850 and 1900.

Another aspect of the study considers who contributes to this trend. Researchers analysed the emissions that were facilitated by the 180 largest producers of fossil fuels and cement – referred to in the study as “carbon majors”. The emissions from these carbon majors account for 60 percent of humanity's total cumulative CO2 emissions from 1850 to 2023, with the rest of the CO2 emissions largely attributable to land use activities. The researchers then calculated the contribution of each carbon major to the change in global average temperature.

The team also ran climate models excluding the emissions of individual carbon majors to highlight the effect of single players on the global average temperature. Once climate researchers know how much these companies have contributed to global warming and how this warming affects heatwaves, they can then calculate how much each of these carbon emitters has influenced each individual heatwave.

“For each heat wave, we calculate how climate change affected its intensity and likelihood,” Quilcaille explains. “We identify both the impact of each individual company and the combined effects of other human and natural factors.”

Even minor carbon emitters play a significant role

The researchers traced global warming’s contributions to heatwaves back to these 180 carbon-producing entities. Their calculations show that greenhouse gas emissions from these carbon majors have contributed significantly to climate change, causing heatwaves to become more likely and more intense. “About half of the change in global mean surface temperature in 2023 can be explained by the emissions of carbon majors,” says Quilcaille. Fourteen of the 180 entities stand out: they have made the same contribution to climate change as the remaining 166 organisations combined.

According to the study, the five largest producers of fossil fuels among state-owned entities or investor-owned companies are from the former Soviet Union, followed by the People's Republic of China (due to coal production), and the oil and/or gas exporters: Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, and ExxonMobil.

“While the 14 largest carbon majors have contributed the most to the occurrence of heatwaves, the contributions of smaller players also play a significant role,” says Quilcaille. Even the CO2 emissions of the smallest of the 180 carbon giants, the Russian coal producer, Elgaugol, are still enough to cause 16 heat waves according to the calculations. The individual contributions of each one of the 14 largest players is enough to cause over 50 heatwaves that would have been almost impossible without climate change.

Energy transition delayed

Why are researchers calculating the contribution of fossil fuel and cement producers when every affluent person drives a car, flies in an airplane on vacation, or heats their home with oil; and, therefore, bears a collective responsibility for the heatwaves? “Past studies have mostly looked at emissions from people and countries. This time, we're focusing on the big carbon emitters,” explains Quilcaille.

These companies have a particular responsibility, he says, as their business involves a very high carbon footprint, “These companies and corporations have also primarily pursued their economic interests, even though they have known since the 1980s that burning fossil fuels will lead to global warming.” According to Quilcaille, these entities have protected and continued their business activities through strategic disinformation and intense lobbying. “Even though every one of us – whether as individuals, countries, or companies – contributes to climate change, some actors have additional responsibilities,” says the researcher.

With this study, the research team aimed to fill a gap in scientific knowledge by using attribution studies to cover a wider range of extreme events and connect them to specific actors. However, their findings could also serve as a basis for establishing responsibility for increasingly frequent heatwaves and making the necessary adjustments to case law. The damage caused by heatwaves could also be assessed more strictly according to the “polluter pays” principle.

“We are now at the point where we recognise the serious consequences of extreme weather events for the world’s economies and societies – heat-related deaths, crop failures and much, much more. People are concerned about who contributed to these disasters,” says Quilcaille.

The researchers now want to systematically investigate other extreme events such as heavy rainfall, droughts, or fires to trace these events back to the contributions of individual actors, thus providing scientific information that can be used by decision-makers.

Contributions of individual actors rarely analysed

This kind of research is known as an attribution study. Climate scientists use these attributions to analyse and grade the relative contributions of different causes to climate change or specific events.

Until now, scientists studying extreme weather have mostly looked at one event at a time, with limited quantification of contributions from individual actors such as nations or corporations. This study by Professor Seneviratne and her research team marks the first time that multiple events have been systematically analysed together in this way.

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-09450-9

Method of Research

Systematic review

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Systematic attribution of heatwaves to the emissions of carbon majors

Article Publication Date

10-Sep-2025

Digging into the origin of lizards

University of Bristol

image:
Lizard reconstruction scene
view more
Credit: Bob Nicholls

A new fossil from Devon reveals what the oldest members of the lizard group looked like, and there are some surprises, according to a research team from the University of Bristol. The study is published today [10 September] in Nature.

Today, lizards and their relatives such as snakes together with the unique tuatara from New Zealand, are the most successful group of land vertebrates, with over 12,000 species – more than birds and more than mammals. But what is it about lizards, snakes and the tuatara, called collectively the Lepidosauria, that has made them so successful?

It was always expected that the first lepidosaurs would have had some of the lizard characters such as a partially hinged skull, an open lower temporal bar, and abundant teeth on the roof of the mouth (palate). These are all features of modern lizards and snakes that enable them to manipulate large prey by opening their mouths super-wide (skull hinge) and use teeth on the palate to grasp wriggling small prey animals.

The lower temporal bar is essentially the cheek bone, a bony rod that runs between the cheek and the jaw hinge and is absent in lizards and snakes today. Snakes and many lizards have all these features, as well as some additional flexibility of the skull. Only the tuatara has a complete lower temporal bar, giving it an archaic look reminiscent of some of the earliest and ancestral reptiles; and it also has some large palatal teeth.

“The new fossil shows almost none of what we expected,” said Dan Marke, who led the project as part of his studies for the MSc in Palaeobiology at Bristol. “It has no teeth on the palate, and no sign of any hinging. It does though have the open temporal bar, so one out of three. Not only this but it possesses some spectacularly large teeth compared to its closest relatives.”

“In modern palaeontological studies we often X-ray scan the fossils,” added Dr David Whiteside, a co-supervisor of the project. “But the exceptional resolution and quality of scans from synchrotron X-ray sources show us all the fine details and save any risk of damage.

“An earlier MSc student, Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul, had worked on the regular scans and found fantastic detail, but it’s so tiny – the skull is only 1.5 cm long, and we could barely see the teeth. So, we were so grateful to be able to make synchrotron CT scans to get even finer resolution, using two powerful beamlines at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (France) and the Diamond Light Source (UK)."

“When you look at the fossil, the whole skeleton sits in the palm of your hand,” explained Michael Benton, another co-supervisor and Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol.

“But after the scans and the hard work of our students cleaning up the scan data, we can see the most amazing detail. The new beast has relatively large triangular-shaped teeth and probably used these to pierce and shear the hard cuticles of its insect prey, pretty much as the tuatara does today.”

“The new animal is unlike anything yet discovered and has made us all think again about the evolution of the lizard, snakes and the tuatara,” said Dan Marke. “We had to give it a name to distinguish it from everything else, and we chose Agriodontosaurus helsbypetrae, quite a mouthful, meaning ‘fierce toothed lizard from the Helsby rock” after the Helsby Sandstone Formation in which it was discovered.

“This specimen not only provides important information about the ancestral skull of all lepidosaurs but also builds on the growing knowledge that the tuatara, while often called a “living fossil”; belongs to a once-diverse order of ancient reptiles with a rich evolutionary history.”

The fossil dates back 242 million years, in the Middle Triassic, just before the dinosaurs appeared, and since then the lepidosaurs have diversified in several stages, the early ones flitting in and out of the undergrowth under the feet of the dinosaurs. They owe their success to their amazing ability to capture insects and other prey using a variety of remarkable adaptations, including their highly flexible jaws and, in the case of some snakes and lizards, the use of venom.

“When I found the specimen back in 2015 on the beach in Devon, I had no idea what it was because there was so little of it exposed” added Dr Rob Coram. “It’s been great to see such an amazing fossil coming from a site that has been providing fossils for 150 years.”

Holotype specimen of Agriodontosaurus helsbypetrae, BRSUG 29950-14; and close-up of preserved skull. Scale bars: 10mm and 5mm, respectively

Credit

Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul

Three-dimensional model of the skull of A. helsbypetrae, reconstructed using synchrotron tomography. The silhouette illustrates the individual elements preserved in the holotype specimen

Phylogenetic tree showing the variation of the lower temporal bar and skull flexibility (modes of kinesis) in fossil and living amniotes (lizards, birds and reptiles)

Credit

Dan Marke

Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-09496-9

Method of Research

Imaging analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

The oldest known lepidosaur and origins of lepidosaur feeding adaptations’

Article Publication Date

10-Sep-2025

Researchers find key to Antarctic ice loss blowing in the north wind

University of Washington

Thwaites to Dotson — image:
Penguins walking across sea ice by a large iceberg in front of Thwaites Ice Shelf, a large, unstable mass of ice that extends from the West Antarctic ice sheet into the sea.
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Credit: Peter Neff

Most of the Earth’s fresh water is locked in the ice that covers Antarctica. As the ocean and atmosphere grow warmer, that ice is melting at a startling pace with sea levels and global currents changing in response. To understand the potential implications, researchers need to know just how fast the ice is disappearing, and what is driving it back.

The West Antarctic ice sheet, an unstable expanse bordering the Amundsen Sea, is one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in climate projections. Records indicate that it has been steadily shrinking since the 1940s, but key details are missing. Using environmental data gathered from ice samples, tree rings and corals, University of Washington researchers tailored a climate model to Antarctica and ran simulations to understand how changing weather patterns dictate ice melt.

The results, published on Sept. 10 in Nature Geoscience, were surprising. For years, researchers have hypothesized that westerly winds were ferrying warm water toward the ice sheet, accelerating ice melt. The new study flips the existing narrative on its head, or rather on its side, pointing toward winds from the north instead.

“We know the Earth is warming up on average, but that alone doesn’t explain ice loss in Antarctica,” said Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. “To understand what’s going to happen in the future, we need to understand the details of what’s happening now, and critically, whether we are connected to it.”

The Antarctic ice sheet covers an area larger than the U.S. and Mexico combined. If the Western-Hemisphere portion were to melt, global sea levels would rise by as much as 20 feet. The ice sheet is locked in place by ice shelves, fingers of ice that stretch into the sea. Free floating sea ice blankets the surface of the surrounding waters.

To study weather in Antarctica, where there are fewer weather stations than most of the world, scientists use computer simulations that draw from available data sources. Still, these models often lack data that is specific to the region, limiting the accuracy of their outputs.

In the past century, westerly winds blowing over high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere have grown stronger in response to human-induced climate change. Indirect evidence also suggested that this trend was driving West Antarctic ice loss. But when the researchers dug into that theory, something didn’t add up.

“We thought that we were going to support what the climate models showed, which was that the westerly winds were getting stronger near the coast of Antarctica," said Gemma O’Connor, lead author and a UW postdoctoral researcher of oceanography. “But there was no evidence of westerly winds strengthening in this part of Antarctica.”

O’Connor’s doctoral research explored how proxy data — historical records from ice cores, trees and coral — can reveal past weather patterns, including wind. Her work showed that the force needed to explain accelerating melt rates was still missing from the equation.

In the new study, researchers conducted a suite of high-resolution ice-ocean simulations to identify what climate patterns were driving ice shelf melting in this critical region of Antarctica. They fed the model a wind pattern for five years at a time, measured how much mass the ice lost, and repeated the process 29 times. Each iteration represented a different wind pattern. Data from the 30 simulations showed that northerly winds consistently exacerbated ice loss. Westerlies did not have the same effect.

The northerly winds, which blow with force in Antarctica, were rearranging the sea ice surrounding Antarctica, capping off small but important gaps called polynyas.

“Sea ice is a really good insulator, it keeps the ocean relatively warm compared to the air,” said Kyle Armour, a UW professor of oceanography and of atmospheric and climate science. “When northerly winds close the polynyas, it reduces ocean heat loss, which means warmer waters and more melting of ice shelves below the surface.”

Polynyas are like pores on the icy surface of the ocean. When they are blocked, excess heat can’t escape. As the ice shelf melts, fresh water mingles with salty ocean water. A density gradient forms between the fresher, lighter water and the open ocean. This gradient powers a current that pulls in more warm ocean water from miles away, advancing ice shelf melt.

Researchers believe greenhouse gas emissions could be fueling the northerly winds. Early studies suggest that human-induced climate change is decreasing air pressure over the Amundsen Sea. This area hosts an influential low-pressure center that drives many of the Antarctic weather patterns. As it gets even lower, wind speed from the north increases.

“This mechanism provides a connection between West Antarctic ice loss and human-induced climate change, albeit a different mechanism than we previously suspected,” O’Connor said. Which is important, the researchers added, because if emissions are contributing to ice loss, perhaps cutting them could curtail it.

“I think what Gemma has done is going to lead to a complete revolution in the understanding of what drives Antarctic ice loss,” Armour said. “We had all sorts of theories about the winds that blow from west to east, but the northerly winds weren’t even on our radar. We were off by 90 degrees.”

Other authors include LuAnne Thompson, a UW professor of oceanography; Mira Berdahl, a UW research scientist of Earth and space sciences; Yoshihiro Nakayama, an assistant professor of engineering at Dartmouth College; Shuntaro Hyogo, a graduate researcher of environmental science at Hokkaido University; and Taketo Shimada, a graduate researcher of environmental science at Hokkaido University

This research was funded by the Washington Research Foundation, the University of Washington eScience Institute, the U.S. National Science Foundation, a Calvin professorship in oceanography, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Inoue Science Foundation, NASA Sea Level Change Team, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and JST SPRING.

For more information, contact Gemma O’Connor at goconnor@uw.edu