Word: paxil
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...like a license to print money. It certainly worked that way for Eli Lilly. When the company launched the antidepressant Prozac in 1987, nobody else had anything quite like it, and Lilly cleaned up. But then other pharmaceutical firms rushed in with their own versions, including Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa and the recently newsworthy Luvox, found in the blood of Columbine High School shooter Eric Harris. The competition has already eaten into Lilly's market share, and things can only go downhill from here...
...search for new ills to conquer is part of any drug's life cycle, the scramble is especially furious with mood drugs like Prozac and its kin. Prozac has been approved for bulimia and obsessive-compulsive disorder in addition to depression, while Zoloft can be used for OCD, and Paxil for both OCD and panic disorder...
...Paxil and its manufacturer, SmithKline Beecham, are upping the ante. If the FDA agrees, and it probably will, SmithKline will soon be pushing Paxil as the first-ever formally sanctioned treatment for, of all things, shyness. This isn't as bizarre as it sounds. FDA approval would actually be for the treatment of "acute social phobia," a pathological form of shyness that's more akin to panic. For doctors, at least, it's no surprise that phobia and depression might be treated with the same drugs. "The big secret," says Dr. Brian Doyle, director of the anxiety disorders program...
...reason is that Paxil, Prozac, Luvox and the others all target the same brain chemical, called serotonin, which seems to govern mood. Too little serotonin, and patients tend to feel negative about themselves and the world around them in one way or another. How that dissatisfaction manifests itself--clinical depression, anxiety, phobias, obsessions, even eating disorders--depends on a complex web of factors that researchers have yet to unravel. But they do know that drugs that keep serotonin from being reabsorbed too quickly into the nerve cells--the so-called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs--tend to alleviate these...
Childhood depression is a disturbingly common phenomenon. About 3.4 million Americans under 18 are said to be "seriously" depressed. That's a lot of gloom in a group so young--and a lot of potential consumers for Prozac and its neurochemical cousins Zoloft and Paxil. In North America, up to 800,000 antidepressant prescriptions were written last year for children, some only five years old. A number of those kids were also taking stimulants like Ritalin, since depression can be a by-product of wrestling with ADHD...