Posted by bob on August 5, 2004, at 13:19:22
In reply to Re: Cymbalta/Duloxetine--Something's Up, posted by caraher on August 5, 2004, at 13:01:04
Again, I am not advocating that any drugs not be allowed to come to market just because there are other drugs like it there already. I'm sure the drug companies won't let that happen anyway, since most of their money comes from making approximate copies of someone else's idea anyway. Like was mentioned before, we understand almost nothing about the mechanisms at work in the brain, so the more the merrior in terms of pharmacological compounds. By the way, what are you talking about with the "kinetics"? I don't think I've heard of that before in this context.
As for all the SSRI me too drugs, I think it's a similar situation. For me they were all quite similar in the end, with the exception of prozac, which has a very long half-life. They do have subtle differences, though, so I guess that's why we need many variations of them. One thing I don't understand is, why don't companies make slight tweaks to their drug compounds in order to make it "patentable" and then bring it to market. Heck, make 10 different variations. This was done with Celexa and Lexapro, so why not do it more?
Lastly, I had heinous problems with Effexor withdrawl. I can guarantee that people who have withdrawl with SSRIs will not enjoy coming off of Cymbalta. Effexor half life is under 10 hrs. I just came off Celexa a month ago, and had some problems (although they paled in comparison to what I went through with Effexor). Celexa's half-life is something like 32 hours. I think Cymbalta is 14? That's not out of problem territory. Sustain release formulas doesn't really help the problem all that much in my mind, since it's the elimination rate that is the culprit, not the introduction rate. You can affect the former by changing the latter, but only to a certain extent.
poster:bob
thread:374053
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040805/msgs/374384.html