Newborn mice given Prozac grow up depressed

[Harry]

[url]http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996579[/url]

Here's an interesting article I saw today. To give a brief summary of it, they give mice prozac since the day they're born (when the brain is developing) and once they're taken off they become depressed and mentally instable. This is probably due to the fact that the brain is used to such high levels of synaptic serotonin and when it's off the brain has no idea what it's supposed to do.

Now what this means is that teenagers that are taking prozac now when they're going through puberty and brain development could become even more depressed later on, being basically dependent and hooked on this drug. True that this hasn't been tested on humans fully yet but it does add some (more to some people) doubt about whether it's good for teenagers to use it.

To add some discussion to this, how many of teenagers here (12-16) know friends that take prozac or if you yourself take it?

[Baron Samedi]

[size=1]I actually had to read the article, because although I have a vague idea of what Prozac is, I don't actually know, lol.

To respond to your question, I don't know anyone who takes Prozac, but my mother is on anti-depressants [Zoloft] for... depression, funnily enough. Anyway, I think that if teenagers are getting really depressed...then we need to be looking at why they are, rather than just pumping them full of drugs. Maybe they should try another anti-depressant. I mean, whats the point of combatting depression with drugs that are likely to create more depression?

Also, injecting the mice over that period that they mentioned [4-21 days after birth] might not be equal to teenage years, in regards to growth of synapses and whatnot. All that brain stuff, lol.[/size]

[Adahn]

Perhaps a better study would be to inject the anti-depressants during a mouse's puberty? The brain developes at an ungodly rate for babies, and by the time you're a teenager, you are growing mentally, but not nearly to the same extent. If one is going to draw conclusions from experimentation, I think they need more parallels between the testing and the actual situation before they can come to any sort of scientific decision.

[Juu]

[color=deeppink][size=1]Well, I have never considered taking a pill for depression, mainly because all the doctors I've met (dad's a doctor, as well as his friends) constantly tell me that while pills treat one thing, it effects another. So for headaches, rather than taking an asprin, you massage the sides of the tip of your middle finger, etc.

And I'd have to agree with Josh on the age issue. The earliest years is when the brain goes through a massive development, and the results should be rather different between newborns and 'teenage' ...rats.[/color][/size]

[Harry]

[quote name='Adahn']Perhaps a better study would be to inject the anti-depressants during a mouse's puberty? The brain developes at an ungodly rate for babies, and by the time you're a teenager, you are growing mentally, but not nearly to the same extent. If one is going to draw conclusions from experimentation, I think they need more parallels between the testing and the actual situation before they can come to any sort of scientific decision.[/quote]
That's true. This is just an initial study so it's not written law. But let's face it, your brain changes all the way until early adult hood. If you're given prozac at the age of 13 for some teen angst thing and take it for 4 years, the affects will still be there.

[ChibiHorsewoman]

[color=darkviolet]This is a very interesting topic for me. Actually it's a bit of a scary coincidence since my OBGYN just decided to put me on Lisinopril today (another aniti depressant) because I seem to have worse than just baby blues.

I was never on Prozac, but when I was 11 or 12 years old (maybe younger now that I think of it) my pediatrician diagnosed me with Clinical Depression (yippee) and put me on Paxil, which is in the same catergory as Prozac. This of course was before anyone found proof of teens being placed on anti depressants becoming suicidal. I'm not going to get into long descriptions here, but at times I nearly got that way as well.

I actually took myself off the stuff (big no no) back in 2001 because the co-pay was too damn expensive ($75 for a 30 day supply) and I needed to support my birth control habit. However when I moved down to Texas my mood took a downward spiral and one of the Army doctors put me back on Paxil, I won't say what happened a few months after but I went off the stuff again because the 20MG pink pill was just making matters worse.

So while there may be some good to come from anti depressants I really don't think they should be given to children at such a young age and other methods should be tried first such as therapy sessions and parents talking to their kids. Prozac and the like should wait until later in teenage years or maybe your 20s unless there's an extremely good reason.[/color]