Posted by joe schmoe on July 13, 2011, at 2:54:51
In reply to Re: Peter Kramer - mixed feelings, posted by jono_in_adelaide on July 13, 2011, at 1:30:47
> "That theory became broadly accepted, by the media and the public as well as by the medical profession, after Prozac came to market in 1987"
>
> Dr William Sargent in England was promoting that theory in the early 60's using Tofranil, Nardil, Librium and Thorazine, and I am sure many prominent American psychiatrists were as well.
>
> One could equaly say that talk therapy became popular when the only alternative was potasium bromide or opium.
Good point. In Kramer's book Listening to Prozac he actually explains in detail how researchers were deliberately trying to find a compound that was selective just for serotonin, to get the antidepressant effects without the side effects of the tricyclics. It was definitely not a case of 'they tried fluoxetine for depression and it worked, so they said serotonin imbalance was to blame for depression.'I remember being fascinated reading about the research techniques of the time.
"In 1971 both Molloy and Wong attended a lecture at Eli Lilly on neurotransmission given by Solomon Snyder, a researcher from Johns Hopkins University. Snyder had developed a technique that would prove immensely useful to the Lilly team. He had ground up rat brains, separated out the nerve endings, and created an extract of nerve endings that worked in the same way as living nerve cells. Wong used this technique to test the effects of Molloys compounds, one of which was found to block the reuptake of serotonin while affecting virtually nothing else. "
It was then I learned the strange word "synaptosome"
poster:joe schmoe
thread:990777
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110630/msgs/990892.html