Research led by Bernhard Luscher, a professor of biology at Penn State, shows that a strange strain of laboratory mice has behavioral, hormonal, and neurochemical characteristics that are similar to human patients with drug-resistant forms of depression, which also comes along with anxiety seventy percent of the time. With this information, Luscher is able to use the mice to determine whether they can serve as aid for developing newly effective medicine for different forms of depression. To first determine if the mice are depressed or not, they must undergo tests, such as techniques to test behavioral and hormonal changes of types of depressions that do not work successfully in humans.

Due to the fact that depression comes along with anxiety, Luscher says, “These facts suggests that whatever mechanism is defective in the brain is similar in both anxiety and depression.” Luscher’s experiment consisted of testing different types of antidepressants on the mice. His results were that some of the antidepressant drugs completely brought the mice back to normal; so they were wild mice lieu laboratory mice with behavioral, hormonal, and neurochemical characteristics, but the mice also had no reaction to the drug when they were normal. According to Luscher, this proved that the mice would be helpful as models for figuring out ways to help understand human depression types, because humans do not have any reactions to these antidepressants too. With that said, the researchers tested two types of antidepressants on the mice, and the results were that one drug reduced the symptoms of anxiety and not depression, Prozac, and the other drug reduced both, desipramine. Those results, in a way, proved the fact of why many people do not respond well to the antidepressant Prozac.

In conclusion, we should care about this information, because it brings attention as to why people wait so long to be cured from depression and anxiety when they are taking antidepressants. The article stated that scientists have a hard time figuring out why antidepressants do not help thirty percent of depressed people. It also said that doctors don’t have a way of knowing which antidepressant is going to work on each patient; so they prescribe different types until they get the right one. Knowing that bit of information, you can assume that it may take weeks to help cure someone of their depression. With the help of the laboratory mice, they can help us find a faster cure to help those that are diagnosed with depression.


Source: Penn State. "Depressed Mice Could Aid Research on Drug-Resistant Depression in Humans." ScienceDaily 30 June 2010. 26 August 2010 .