A shortage of serotonin in the brain has not yet been found in depression patients
In a study of eight depressed patients (all of whom had been previously exposed to antidepressants), Dr. Malcom Bowers and his team had announced that their 5-HIAA levels were lower than normal, but not “significantly” so. Two years later, investigators at McGill University said that they, too, had failed to find a “statistically significant” difference in the 5-HIAA levels of depressed patients and normal controls, and that they also had failed to find any correlation between 5-HIAA levels and the severity of depressive symptoms. In 1974, Bowers was back with a more finely tuned follow-up study: Depressed patients who had not been exposed to antidepressants had perfectly normal 5-HIAA levels.
References
- Whitaker, Robert. (2010). Anatomy of an Epidemic Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America 5. The Hunt for Chemical Imbalances (p. 99). New York , NY: Crown Publishing.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Biochemistry / Neuroscience / Pharmacology Status:☀️