Antidepressants may exert their effect by increasing cell proliferation and neuronal number. It is through this mechanism that Malberg
Jessica E. Malberg and colleagues at Connecticut Medical Center, New Haven treated groups of rats with three different classes of antidepressant: fluoxetine, tranylcypromine, and reboxetine. There were also two control groups of rats: one received haloperidol, which is normally used to treat mood disorders in schizophrenics, and the second received no treatment. The researchers injected the rats with human-equivalent doses of the drugs once or twice daily together with the thymidine analog bromodeoxyuridine as a marker for dividing cells.
The team reported in Journal of Neuroscience that after several weeks the rats treated with antidepressant had significantly more new cells compared with the control groups. In addition, these cells seemed to survive longer than ...
