Word: serotonin
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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...
Another line of investigation revealed 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...
...another series of studies in the 1970s, scientists discovered links between serotonin and aggressive behavior. Monkeys with high levels of serotonin by-products in their blood, it turns out, tend to be feistier, and drugs that boost serotonin activity tend to calm them down. The serotonin-violence link appears to hold for humans as well. In 1979 psychiatrist Frederick Goodwin, now at George Washington University, discovered that Navy enlisted men with low levels of serotonin byproducts often had a history of aggression. Subsequent studies discovered similar evidence in Marines discharged for excessive violence, in people who became violent after drinking...
Their efforts failed, but Richard Wurtman, an M.I.T. neurologist and Lilly consultant, took a different approach. Instead of using Prozac as a starting point, he turned to fenfluramine, a European weight-loss drug. Because fenfluramine acts on both serotonin and dopamine, it has the unfortunate side effect of putting its users to sleep. That is why doctors came up with fen/phen; the "phen" (phentermine) is an amphetamine-like drug that wakes the patient up again and boosts the metabolism to burn calories faster. Wurtman separated fenfluramine into its two component chemicals, levofenfluramine and dexfenfluramine. The latter has revealed itself...
...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...