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Editor: Robert Binstock
Profession: Paxil Side Effect Attorney

Category: Paxil News

A new family of drugs has been shown to start working much faster than traditional antidepressants in lab studies involving rats. The new compounds seem to start working in days rather than the weeks associated their predecessors. The drugs called, serotonin receptor agonists, will not be replacing Paxil anytime soon though.

These medications are still in the lab-testing phase and none have been approved for use in humans. The new drugs do seem to have risks of side effects that are associated with other antidepressants and some have already been tossed aside due to this concern.

Paxil and other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can take up to two months begin demonstrating desired results and for many SSRIs are not effective at all.

Although the studies were done in rats, the researchers suggest that serotonin receptor agonists might also be speedier than SSRIs in humans. "We can expect therapeutic benefits to appear four to five times more rapidly," says Lucas, who is now at the University of Montreal.

The study stands out because it looked at several different ways of monitoring depression in rats and found the same answer, says Duman. But he cautions: "It really has to be taken with a grain of salt because these are rodent models, and they're a long way from what could happen in human studies of depression."