Pharyngula

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Sunday, November 27, 2005

Antidepressants affect neurogeneration in hippocampus

I have always wondered about the biochemistry of depression in humans. So when I stumbled across an article about anti-depressant drugs, I read on with curiosity. This article was about how the continued uses of anti-depressants have been shown to increase cell growth in the hippocampus (located inside the temporal lobe of the brain and plays a part in memory and navigation). Ongoing studies are being done at Yale University in order to show how anti-depressants are able to produce their therapeutic response.
For the past 15 years Professor Ronald Dunham’s (professor of psychiatry and pharmacology) laboratory has been studying the mechanism of action of anti-depressants in rodents. His research is focused on the role of the intracellular signal transduction pathways that control neuronal function. They have been able to identify several actions of anti-depressants which indicate that anti-depressants influence the survival or the number of neurons in the hippocampus.
The study in this article was intended to look at the whether the anti-depressants increased neurogenesis in the hippocampus. They used four common antidepressants; 1, electroconvulsive seizure therapy (ECS) which is clinically the most effective treatment for cases of depression that are resistant to drug treatments, 2, monoamineoxidase inhibitor (tranclypromine), 3, a serotonin-selective reuptake inibitor (fluoxetine), and 4, a norepinephrine-selective reuptake inhibitor (reboxetine). They found that after brief exposure (1-5 days) there was no significant neuron production. After prolonged administration (14-28 days) there was a significant change in neuron growth in the hippocampus. These results were consistent with treatments for the therapeutic response to anti-depressants.
Link to this article can be found here: Sustained Use of Anti-depressants Increases Cell Growth

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Comments:
#51044: — 11/28  at  10:21 PM

It’s really true!  My senior seminar talked about antidepressant drugs and neurogenesis in the hippocampal region of adolescent rats.




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