Are Antidepressants Targeting the Wrong Problem?
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About half of depression sufferers find relieve in antidepressant medications. But for the rest, these may provide little or no relief. New research by Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine psychiatry professor Eva Redei suggests this may be because depression treatment is based on two faulty beliefs: first, that stressful life events trigger depression and second, that an imbalance in neurotransmitters is its biological cause. Her studies show that in fact, there is no overlap between depression genes and stress genes. In a study of chronic stress on mice, she found that out of 254 genes related to stress and 1275 genes related to depression, just five overlapped--an insignificant number. Most depression drugs are developed using a similar animal stress model. But if there isn't a strong connection between stress and depression, this model may be the wrong one. Her research also suggested that the cause of depression begins not with neurotransmitters, but in the development and functioning of neurons in the brain. In this case, low levels of neurotransmitters such as serotonin would not be looked at as a direct cause of depression, but rather the effect of errors in neuron function. If correct, the findings have the potential to greatly improve the treatment of depression by changing the very model by which antidepressants are developed. Read more: Why antidepressants don't work for so many SHARE:
Posted In: Depression Research | Stress & Coping | Tags: Depression | Depression Research | Stress | Posted by FindCounseling.com Staff on October 29, 2009 at 08:45 PM | Permalink |
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