Word: serotonin
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...babies feel antidepressant-withdrawal symptoms? Researchers at the Rabin Medical Center in Israel think they do. A study of 120 newborns found that among those whose mothers took the antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), nearly one-third experienced neonatal-abstinence syndrome--drug withdrawal characterized by such symptoms as tremors, gastrointestinal distress and sleep disturbances. Depression will affect between one-tenth and one-fourth of women and is often exacerbated by pregnancy. Doctors aren't telling severely depressed mothers-to-be to stop taking antidepressants, but they should be aware that doing so poses certain risks for newborns...
...major study out of UCLA concluded that the drugs do more good than harm. Starting in the early 1960s, the annual U.S. suicide rate held fairly steady at 12 to 14 instances per 100,000--until 1988, when the first of a new generation of antidepressants, the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, was introduced. The suicide rate has been falling ever since, to around 10 per 100,000. The investigators estimate that nearly 34,000 lives have been saved...
...recruiting 165 student teachers from a Sydney college, they interviewed them about their personal lives and medical histories, and followed them up every five years to record changes in their circumstances. In the meantime, research elsewhere was linking variations in the gene that controls the movement of the neurotransmitter serotonin with susceptibility to depression. The serotonin transporter comes in three distinct genotypes, and depending on which one a person has, he or she is believed to be prone to depression, partially protected from it, or neither...
Still feeling tired from all that serotonin still kicking around in your bloodstream? Then try out this pick-me-up to make sure you’re awake all night this weekend...
...knows for sure whether serotonin has a role in depression, let alone exactly what that role might be. But many doctors pretend they're sure, Whitaker says, because "psychiatry for a long time had a bit of an inferiority complex. It wanted magic bullets like everybody else." Trouble is, the magic bullets, including the SSRIs, don't work very well. By perturbing neurotransmitter activity they can make patients chronically ill, says the Boston-based author...