Posted by JohnL on October 17, 1999, at 5:27:53
In Sept 99 issue of Clinical Psychiatry News (at the Medscape site) the FDA has just deemed Reboxetine "approvable" and should be available by year's end. It tested superior to Prozac in severe depression and was also superior in symptoms of interest, energy, motivation. It's side effects--including sexual-- were less than SSRIs. Should be an interesting development. Just thought I'd pass this along to anyone interested.
Also of interest was anecdotal reports of St Johswort inducing mania in bipolars. Also evidence that serotonin inhibition by St Johns is not achievable in clinical practice to cause serotonin sydrome with an SSRI. Doctors discourage the combo because of lawsuit risk. Also the MAOI characteristics of St Johns seem to be negligible. It's true mechanisms seems controversial and not well known based on conflicting things I've read.
And one more tidbit, the novel anticonvulsant Lamictal is showing great promise in bipolar illness, being effective for both mania and depression.
Just some various tidbits of interest. I thought the Reboxetine issue would be of particular interest to a lot of us out there.
poster:JohnL
thread:13305
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991016/msgs/13305.html