Word: braine
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...serotonin trail led scientists down a number of other interesting paths as well. One involved LSD: clinicians discovered that people on MAO inhibitors were much less sensitive to the drug than normal. The consensus is that LSD mimics serotonin in the brain and latches onto the same neuronal receptors. With MAO inhibitors keeping more serotonin in circulation, the acid cannot elbow...
...that serotonin may play a role in sleep. Destroy the raphe nuclei in cats, and they develop permanent and total insomnia. Give the wakeful cats a shot of serotonin, and they immediately go to sleep. In humans the amino acid L-tryptophan, which is converted to serotonin in the brain, is sometimes used as a sleeping pill. (A bad batch of L-tryptophan killed several people in the late 1980s and effectively killed the craze.) In another experiment, researchers discovered that when they stimulated raphe cells to release extra serotonin not in the brain but in the spinal cord, test...
From the start, it was clear that Redux has serious potential side effects. One is primary pulmonary hypertension, a rare form of high blood pressure that strikes the blood vessels of the lungs. Another, considered even more serious by some of Redux's critics, was the possibility of brain damage. When fed to monkeys, dexfenfluramine can destroy neurons. Says John Harvey of the Allegheny University of Health Sciences in Philadelphia, who edits the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics: "Any of us who were pharmacologists knew this was a dirty drug. None of us was surprised...
...would they? After all, other serotonin enhancers, such as Prozac, have never caused heart problems. There is a crucial difference, however, between Prozac and Redux-fenfluramine. The former, like the other SSRIS, keeps serotonin in circulation longer than it would otherwise be, thus helping the brain get the most out of its normal output. The latter do the same, but they also force nerve cells to boost the levels of serotonin that go into circulation. It is this unnatural bath of excess serotonin, some scientists theorize, that causes heart-valve defects and also triggers brain damage--in monkeys...
...manufacturers' action--research into serotonin-boosting drugs is hardly slowing down. If anything, the discovery of a new set of side effects will spur researchers to hone their pharmacological handiwork even more, to create medicines that will not just fine-tune the way serotonin is used in the brain but might target specific serotonin receptors as well or act on only specific parts of the brain and nervous system...