Scientists have identified a drug that appears to produce the antidepressant effects of LSD without the psychedelic side effects — at least in mice.
Drugs like magic mushrooms and LSD can act as powerful antidepressants, but they also produce mind-bending side effects. Well, NPR's Jon Hamilton reports on a drug based on LSD that appears to treat depression in mice without taking the animals on a trip.
HAMILTON: One study found the results can last a year or more, perhaps because the drug causes the brain to rewire. Psychedelic drugs, though, require medical supervision and a therapist to guide a patient through their hallucinatory experience. Shoichet says that's an impractical way to treat millions of people with depression.
SHOICHET: They had the best properties. They were the most potent, and when you gave them to a mouse, they got into the brain at high concentrations. HAMILTON: But were those mice tripping? Apparently not. Psychedelic drugs cause mice to twitch frequently in a distinctive way. And Roth says that wasn't the case with mice that got the team's LSD-based compound.HAMILTON: Studies in people are still a ways off. Even so, Roth says the approach points to a class of depression drugs that would have a huge advantage over products like Prozac and Zoloft, which are taken every day.
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