HEINZ E. LEHMANN, editor: NON-TRICYLIC AND NON-MONOAMINE OXIDASE INHIBITORS

HEINZ E. LEHMANN, editor: NON-TRICYLIC AND NON-MONOAMINE OXIDASE INHIBITORS

Modern Problems of Pharmacopsychiatry Volume 18.
Karger, Basel, 1982. (212 pages)

Reviewed by Carlos Morra

CONTENT: This book is divided into five sections, preceded by the Editor’s Foreword. Section One, “Neurotransmitter Modifiers,” includes six papers. It opens with a paper on Monoamine Uptake Inhibitors (MAUI) by T.A. Ban, in which he reviews the status of ten structurally different groups of non-tricyclic antidepressants that belong to this category. Then come four reviews on specific drugs:  Maprotiline by W. Grüter and W. Pöldinger; Trazadone by F.J. Ayd and E.C. Settle Jr; Mianserin by R.M. Pinder and M. Fink; and Iprindole by C. de Montigny.  In the last paper of Section One, H.M. van Praag discusses the “Significance of serotonin precursors as antidepressants”.

Section Two, “Ion Transport Modulators” comprises two papers. In the first, J. Mendels addresses the “Role of lithium as an antidepressant” and in the other, R.R. Fieve and K.R. Jamison provide an “overview” and “clinical perspective” on Rubidium.  Each of the remaining three sections includes only one paper. In Section Three, a chapter on  “Neuropeptides,” by A.J. Prange and P.T. Loosen  examines the status of “Neuropeptides as novel antidepressants”; in  Section Four,  J.R. Wittenborn  presents information on  “Antidepressant  use of amphetamines and other psychostimulants”; and in Section Five, J.P. Feighner discusses the use of ”Benzodiazepines as Antidepressants” with special reference to alprazolam, “a triazolo-benzodiazepine used to treat depression”.

REVIEWER’S COMMENT: This volume reflects the status of antidepressant development in the early 1980s. It was a period in which, as Heinz Lehmann, the editor of this volume said in his “Foreword,” there was “a whole new generation of antidepressants available for clinical use”  and many more agents of this type were in  various stages of pharmacological and clinical investigation”. In concluding the volume, Lehman wrote that it was a period in which it seemed “that antidepressant therapy has broken out of its mold and that future development  in the field will  be  based  more on rational search than on empirical trial”.    

Carlos Morra

October 30, 2014