Researchers Unravel Brain’s Barrier to Antidepressants
Posted by Shirley S. Wang
January 23, 2008, 5:11 pm
Scientists have identified variations in a gene that helped them explain why some patients respond to certain antidepressants, according to research published today in the journal Neuron.
neuron.org
Only about one-third of depressed patients feel better after taking any given antidepressant. And there’s no way to tell in advance which drug will work for a particular patient.
A person’s response to antidepressants is thought to be related, in part, to how well a drug can move from the bloodstream into the brain. And the ease of access appears to vary. The walls of blood vessels feeding the brain form a barrier that protects the organ from infections and toxins. But the barrier can also block some helpful substances, such as drugs.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany, used mice with missing genes to determine that some drugs were able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier more easily when a gene similar to the human one called ABCB1 was turned off.
And the researchers then examined the gene in 443 depressed individuals and found that some variations were associated with significantly greater improvement in depression symptoms in patients taking Forest Laboratory’s Celexa, or citalopram, and Wyeth’s Effexor, or venlafaxine.
What does it all mean? Some day there could be more personalized forms of depression treatment based on a patient’s genetic profile. The authors of the paper in Neuron say their findings represent the first time a genetic marker has indicated in a clinical sample who will respond to antidepressant treatment. But you can’t run down to the local clinical laboratory for the test just yet.
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