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Lithium and antidepressants: inhibiting eicosanoids, stimulating immunity, and defeating microorganisms

Julian Lieb1

  • 1julianlieb@aol.com

Medical Hypotheses
|September 5, 2002
PubMed

Infection-emerging, reemerging, antibiotic-resistant, and bioengineered-increasingly threatens mankind. It is widely assumed that immunostimulating agents, were they to exist, would be ideal in battling microorganisms. Various investigators have established lithium and antidepressants as immunostimulants and antimicrobials and they have identified the mechanisms involved. Eicosanoids both depress immunity and activate microorganisms and lithium and antidepressants oppose eicosanoids. Such philosophers of science as Paul Feyerabend have argued that special interests invariably oppose revolutionary paradigms.

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