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History of the Discovery of Antidepressant Drugs

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Melatonin, Neuroprotective Agents and Antidepressant Therapy

Abstract

The clinical introduction of the first two specifically antidepressant drugs took place during the 1950s: iproniazid, a monoamine-oxidase inhibitor that had been used in the treatment of tuberculosis, and imipramine, the first drug in the tricyclic antidepressant family. Both antidepressant drugs made two fundamental contributions to the development of psychiatry: one of a social-health nature, consisting in an authentic change in the psychiatric care of depressive patients; and the other of a purely pharmacological nature, since these agents have constituted an indispensable research tool for neurobiology and psychopharmacology, permitting, among other things, the postulation of the first aetiopathogenic hypotheses of depressive disorders. The clinical introduction of fluoxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, in the late 1980s, once again revolutionized therapy for depression, opening the way for new families of antidepressants. All of these antidepressants, like the rest of those currently available for clinical practice, except agomelatine, share the same action mechanism, which involves the modulation of monoaminergic neurotransmission at a synaptic level. However, the future of antidepressant therapy could be directed to the search of extraneuronal non-aminergic mechanisms or mechanisms that modulate the intraneuronal biochemical pathways.

This chapter is based on the following article published by the authors: López-Muñoz F, Alamo C. Monoaminergic neurotransmission: The history of the discovery of antidepressants from 1950s until today. Current Pharmaceutical Design 2009; 15: 1563–1586.

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  1. Faculty of Health Sciences, Camilo José Cela University, Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain

    Francisco López-Muñoz

  2. Neuropsychopharmacology Unit, Hospital 12 de Octubre Research Institute (i+12), Madrid, Spain

    Francisco López-Muñoz

  3. Portucalense Institute of Neuropsychology and Cognitive and Behavioural Neurosciences, Portucalense University, Porto, Portugal

    Francisco López-Muñoz

  4. Department of Biomedical Sciences (Pharmacology Area), Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Alcalá, Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, Spain

    Cecilio Álamo

Authors
  1. Francisco López-Muñoz
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  2. Cecilio Álamo
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Correspondence to Francisco López-Muñoz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Vice-Rectorate for Research and Sci, Camilo José Cela University Vice-Rectorate for Research and Sci, Madrid, Spain

    Francisco López-Muñoz

  2. International Medical Sciences Research Study Center, Sri Sathya Sai Medical Educational & Research Foundation, Coimbatore, India

    Venkataramanujam Srinivasan

  3. Department of Neurosciences and Ima, University of Chieti Department of Neurosciences and Ima, Italy, Italy

    Domenico de Berardis

  4. Department of Biomedical Sciences (Pharmacology Area), University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain

    Cecilio Álamo

  5. Department of Neuropsychiatry, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Takahiro A. Kato

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© 2016 Springer India

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López-Muñoz, F., Álamo, C. (2016). History of the Discovery of Antidepressant Drugs. In: López-Muñoz, F., Srinivasan, V., de Berardis, D., Álamo, C., Kato, T. (eds) Melatonin, Neuroprotective Agents and Antidepressant Therapy. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2803-5_26

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2803-5_26

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