Xylazine and Ketamine
Both Xylazine and Ketamine are used in veterinary medicine. They are particularly useful for their analgesic and anesthetic properties. While ketamine is dissociative and helps with pain relief and sedation, Xylazine is a sedative analgesic and muscle relaxant. They are used to provide a balanced anesthesia protocol for animals.
Their use in humans is strictly controlled due to potential abuse and health risks.
What Is Xylazine?
Xylazine is a medicine used in veterinary for its anesthetic and sedative effects [1]. It is a non-opioid and its use is not approved for humans [2]. It belongs to the group of drugs called alpha-adrenergic receptor agonists. Hence its mechanism of action is that it decreases activity in the sympathetic nervous system [3].
Although the use of Xylazine in humans is not allowed, in recent years it has been detected in the illicit drug supply in the United States in combination with opioids such as fentanyl and heroin [2, 4, 1]. However, such a combination can result in fatal overdose [5].
In addition, xylazine has been associated with severe health complications such as respiratory depression, bradycardia, hypotension, and also severe tissue injuries [3, 6]
What Is Ketamine?
Ketamine is a synthetic drug. Its chemical name is 2 - (2chlorophenyl) 2-(methylamine)-cyclohexanone [7, 8].
It is a rapidly acting anesthetic commonly used during surgical procedures in both humans and animals [9]. Ketamine acts as a noncompetitive N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist. It serves as a dissociative and analgesic sedative producing potent analgesia, sedation and amnesia, while it preserves spontaneous respiratory drive [10]. It can also affect brain receptors, especially receptors for opioids, serotonin, GABA, sigma and dopamine receptors [4].
Not only is ketamine known for its medical use, but it is also recognized as a common drug of abuse, especially because of its hallucinogenic and sedative effects [11]. These effects are called a K-hole or K-holing [12].
Read our blogs on ketamine and bipolar disorder or ketamine and ocd.
What Is The Difference Between Xylazine and Ketamine?
While Ketamine and Xylazine are both used as anesthetics, they have a different mechanisms of action in the way they affect the body.
As mentioned previously, Ketamine works by blocking the NMDA receptors in the brain, hence leading to a state of unconsciousness and pain relief [13].
...
Can You Take Xylazine and Ketamine?
In veterinary medicine, the combination of ketamine and xylazine is commonly used for various animal species. Especially because Xylazine enhances the analgesic and anesthetic effects of Ketamine, providing adequate anesthesia for various procedures.
In addition, the combination of these two can also prolong the effects of anesthesia. For instance, in rabbits, the mean surgical anesthesia time with Ketamine-Xylazine was 35 minutes, compared to 72 minutes with another anesthetic combination [14].
Its combination of anesthesia and analgesia can be used in animals like rhesus monkeys, rabbits or hamsters [15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20]. Further, in horses, it functions great, however, a large dose of ketamine after the sedation with xylazine can be accompanied by muscular tremor or rigidity, oculogyric movements, sweating or hypertension during recovery from anesthesia [21].
Therefore, we need to be careful about combining these two in animals. Further unwanted effects resulting from the combination can be depressed heart rate, respiration rate or body temperature [15]. In rare cases, it can also lead to fatal outcomes. In a study on hamsters, 200 mg/kg of ketamine with 10 mg/kg xylazine caused death in 13 of 24 hamsters [18, 19].
However, please note that such combination is not allowed in humans, and the use of ketamine and xylazine is not recommended, especially as xylazine is not approved for human use!