Source:Los Angeles Timesmetro,page B 4
Contact:(letters@latimes.com)

In July,researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,Minn.,found that
a combination of drugs commonly used to combat obesity were
associated with dangerous heart problems.The drug combination known
as fenphen should be prescribed only when health risks of obesity
markedly exceed the risks of the drugs.

Last week, however, researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health
(NIMH) discovered another problem associated with one of the diet drugs,
fenfluramine. The discovery has broad implications. That's because the drug
works in ways similar to Prozac and many of the other highly popular,
relatively new antidepressant drugs called "selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors," or SSRIs. By preventing the "reuptake" or absorption of a
chemical called serotonin, these drugs enhance pleasant emotions (like
happiness) while diminishing unpleasant ones. The new study found that
fenfluramine not only prevents the absorption of serotonin but also
diminishes the brain's sensitivity to serotonin.

The researchers did not6 explore whether the same is true of SSRIs like
Prozac, and after more than a decade of use there is no specific evidence
that they harm the brain in any way. Nevertheless, given that Americans are
now taking hundreds of new drugs that scientists are only beginning to
understand, the NIMH study should remind us not to assume that medicine is
allknowing.

Consider the recent confession by Harvard Medical School psychiatrist
William S. APPLETON that he has barely begun to understand serotonin's
effect on the synapse, the space between brain cells where it is absorbed.
"I have begun to regard the serotonin synapse," Appleton writes, "the same
way I think of my radio when it does not workI hit it and it often starts
broadcasting again. I have begun to believe that is what these
antidepressants do to the synapsethey hit it."

That may be a good hunch. But it's still a far cry from a scientific
understanding of drugs we have come to take almost as unthinkingly as
aspirin.