Posted by ed_uk on December 8, 2004, at 14:19:33
Hi,
...... As most people on psycho-babble will know all too well, antidepressants often take many weeks to elevate mood.
From biopsychiatry.... 'Investigational drugs are lab-tested by Big Pharma to discover whether or not non-human animals will self-administer them. Candidate compounds are normally discarded if the animals do so, arguably a perverse route to uncovering antidepressants with good clinical efficacy and high patient compliance.'
Antidepressant vs euphoriant.........
Unsuprisingly, drugs such as cocaine and oxycodone which are capable of rapidly inducing euphoria have a substantial potential for abuse. In addition, such euphoriant substances probably have little long-term efficacy in the treatment of affective disorders- the risks substantially outweighing the benefits for most.Potential antidepressant molecules which are self-administered by animals tend to be discarded by the pharmaceutical industry because it is likely that such drugs would be abused by humans.
So, is it likely that in the near future we will witness the development of new rapid-acting antidepressants? ........Perhaps in the future, when more is understood about the pathophysiology of depressive illness, rapid-acting ADs will be designed that are unlikely to induce euphoria in healthy individuals. Such drugs would need to be very specific however; is it likely that the pharmaceutical industry will want to develop drugs which would only be effective for a small subset of patients shown to have a specific abnormality?
Ed.
poster:ed_uk
thread:426234
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20041206/msgs/426234.html