Posted by gadchik on December 15, 2013, at 18:13:43
I copied the info from the link below:
http://theconversation.com/some-antidepressants-work-better-than-others-now-we-know-why-17850
SSRIs vs NRIs
Our research suggests that the varying effectiveness of SSRIs and NRIs may be underpinned by their different impacts on brain activity, which can be seen after just one dose.We took brain activity data from nine different international studies. Five studies looked exclusively at SSRIs, two looked exclusively at NRIs, and the other two looked at both SSRIs and NRIs. A total of 152 patients participated in these studies: 103 received SSRIs while the other 81 received NRIs.
When participants were given an SSRI, the amygdala became less active. This indicates that our brains become less emotionally reactive after a single dose of an antidepressant.
SSRI treatment also increased activity in frontal regions of the brain, including a region of the prefrontal cortex involved in regulating emotions, suggesting that SSRIs may increase capacity to regulate our emotions.
In contrast, when participants were given an NRI, only frontal regions increased in activity, while amygdala activity did not change.
So, SSRIs may be more effective than NRIs for treating mood and anxiety disorders because SSRIs impacted the emotionally reactive amygdala, while NRIs did not.
Next stepsThese findings are important because patients only begin to display observable changes in symptoms after six weeks of ongoing treatment. But if the increases in frontal lobe activity and decreases in amygdala activity follow a single dose of an SSRI, this could act as an early indicator of the effectiveness of treatment over the longer term.
The next steps in our research are to further investigate how these changes occur, and whether genetic differences play a role. More research is also needed on both healthy people and patient samples to better understand how antidepressant treatments work and to predict outcomes with different treatments.
Though we dont yet have the answers or tests to predict whether a treatment will work for a particular patient, its important that we increase our understanding about why some antidepressants are more effective than others.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep.-Rumi
poster:gadchik
thread:1056264
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20131209/msgs/1056264.html