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Molecular mechanisms of action of antidepressants.
Brenišin, Martin ; Hejnová, Lucie (advisor) ; Valeš, Karel (referee)
Depression is a widely spread medical illness which affects people's thoughts, moods, physical health and general quality of their lives. Typical symptoms of this disorder are bad mood, lack of energy, sadness, insomnia or disability to feel happiness and enjoy life. Most people have encountered depression either directly or indirectly, through their family members or close friends. Number of patients with major depressive disorder grows globally every year. As much as half of the patients have got suicidal thoughts during their depressive episode while a quarter of them have tried to commit suicide. Therefore, the treatment of depression is very important. Antidepressants represent a large group of drugs focused on that treatment. Nowadays, there is a lot of antidepressants with different mechanism of action, their main effect being the increase in levels of monoamine neurotransmitters in brain. Selective reuptake inhibitors achieve this by blocking transporters of said neurotransmitters. Another type of antidepressants inhibits the activity of monoamine oxidase, which degrades serotonin, noradrenaline and dopamine. This paper reviews basic knowledge about main types of antidepressants and their mechanism of action. Key words: antidepressants, serotonin, depression, noradrenaline, monoamine...
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