Antidepressants and ∝-adrenoceptors

Although research into the biochemical and pharmacological effects of psychotropic agents has been largely responsible for the development of hypotheses concerning the etiology of depressive illness, the precise mechanism of action of antidepressant drugs is still a matter for conjecture. The widely quoted hypothesis of monoamine deficiency in depression, whereby antidepressants act rapidly to enhance the availability of norepinephrine (NE) and/or serotonin (5-HT) in the brain via decreased catabolism or inhibition of monoamine uptake (Schildkraut, 1965), is now seen to be an oversimplification (Charney et al. , 1981b; Sugrue, 1981a; Waldmeier, 1981). Thus, some newer antidepressants neither inhibit monoamine oxidase (MAO) nor significantly affect monoamine uptake, while several highly effective uptake inhibitors appear not to be useful in the treatment of depression. Furthermore, the time course of drug effects on monoamine availability, which are immediate, are inconsistent with the clinical improvement, which may take two to three weeks. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.