- With Mayo Clinic psychiatrist
David Mrazek, M.D.
read biographyclose windowBiography of
David Mrazek, M.D.
David Mrazek, M.D.
Dr. David A. Mrazek is chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychology at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., and a professor of psychiatry at College of Medicine, Mayo Clinic. Dr. Mrazek has developed a federally funded psychiatric pharmacogenomics research program and implemented clinical psychiatric pharmacogenomics services at Mayo Clinic.
He has received numerous awards including the Award for Creativity in Psychiatric Education from the American College of Psychiatrists and the Agnes Purcell McGavin Award for Distinguished Career Achievement in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry from the American Psychiatric Association. He currently serves as chairman of the board of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
Dr. Mrazek has focused his current efforts on using pharmacogenomics testing to improve clinical care. One of his specific goals is to decrease the risks of taking psychiatric medications.
Latest entries
- Complexity of depression diagnosis makes treatment difficult
March 8, 2012
- Depression sometimes shifts to bipolar disorder
Jan. 21, 2012
- Antidepressant use soaring among Americans 12 and over
Dec. 7, 2011
- Transcranial magnetic stimulation offers hope treating depression
Oct. 19, 2011
- New antidepressant offers hope
Sept. 3, 2011
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Depression blog
-
Sept. 3, 2011
New antidepressant offers hope
By David Mrazek, M.D.
For those of you with depression who've been struggling to find the right antidepressant medication, the introduction of a new antidepressant is always a hopeful event. Recently, the antidepressant vilazodone became available to U.S. patients. The trade name of this new medication is Viibryd.
| Need more help? |
|
The mechanism action of vilazodone is somewhat different from many antidepressants. While vilazodone does inhibit the reuptake of serotonin like so many other antidepressants, it's also a "partial agonist" of the serotonin 1A receptor. This second mechanism may be particularly helpful for some people based on the receptivity of their serotonin 1A receptor.
It's not clear who will be most likely to respond well to vilazodone as a result of its effect on the serotonin 1A receptor. However, future research focusing on differential response may well lead to clues that will help us identify who will respond to vilazodone.
The metabolic profile of vilazodone makes it quite likely that most people will be able to tolerate it at the recommended dose. However, since vilazodone is metabolized by the cytochrome P450 3A4 enzyme, a small number of people who have deficient copies of the gene that codes for this enzyme are unlikely to tolerate vilazodone at the standard dose. This problem with tolerance will also be true for people who have a normal metabolic capacity, but who take medications that inhibit the function of the 3A4 enzyme.
One of the most attractive aspects of this newly released antidepressant is that the initial clinical trials reported a quite low incidence of sexual side effects. If these initial reports are confirmed as larger numbers of people are treated, vilazodone will clearly become the antidepressant of choice for those who have struggled with sexual side effects while taking either the SSRI's or the SNRI's.
At this point, there's been little pharmacogenomic research focused on this new drug. However, as individualized molecular psychiatry becomes more prominently practiced, future research will hopefully provide some clues as to which of you will be most likely to respond to vilazodone.
38 comments posted
Share on:
38 comments posted