It’s no secret that laughing gas can lighten the mood for a dental procedure, but recently some researchers decided to test if the mood boosting effect went beyond the dental chair.

A group of researchers at the Washington University in St. Louis did a study where they gave laughing gas (or nitrous oxide) to a group of twenty participants while giving a separate group a placebo, according to CBS News.

Out of the people who were given the two doses of laughing gas, 2/3rds of them reported a decrease in their depression symptoms. From the placebo group only 1/3rd of the people felt like their symptoms were improving. This is a notable enough difference to suggest that laughing gas can in fact ease symptoms of depression, and quickly. The findings were published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

There is no magic pill that can erase depression, and many people struggle with little improvements even when they do take antidepressants in an effort to treat it. But this news about the laughing gas provides a glimmer of hope that there are in fact, some potential options out there for immediately and effectively being able to lift depression and low moods.

“The nitrous oxide treatment improved it above and beyond the placebo,” said Dr. Peter Nagele, assistant professor of anesthesiology at Washington University’s School of Medicine. “This was fairly rapid, so at two hours. But our primary endpoint when we measured everybody — we asked the patients to come back the next day — was sustained to a day. ”

They also went on to suggest that some of the participants who were given the nitrous oxide experienced complete remission from their symptoms, but some more comprehensive studies over a longer period of time would be necessary to state this as fact.

In addition to the findings that laughing gas seems to lift depression symptoms, they also found that laughing gas has a similar effect on the body to ketamine. Ketamine is a much stronger drug but one that is also sometimes used as a sedative for dental procedures.

“Interestingly, ketamine and nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, share several aspects of how they work in the brain, and one core affect site is called the NMDA receptor,” said Nagele. “Both nitrous oxide and ketamine act on this mechanism.”

While the drugs have similar effects on the brain, laughing gas would be a much more efficient treatment if approved as it is administered via inhalation as opposed to intravenously, and has fewer side effects.