[Proserotoninergic agents and depression (author's transl)]

The proserotoninergic hypothesis of depression has been for a long time founded on biochemical parameters (brain from suicide patients, CSF and plasma from depressed patients) or more recently on measurement of platelets 5-HT uptake or imipramine binding. New specific proserotoninergic agents confirm this hypothesis since indalpine, a specific 5-HT uptake inhibitor, has a neurochemical and pharmacological profile characteristics of proserotoninergic agents and is effectively antidepressant in human. 5-HT uptake inhibition seems an important property because when we compared two isomers one, a 5-HT uptake inhibitor and at the same time 5-HT releaser, and the other only releaser, we observed that the first has experimental properties similar to indalpine whereas the second has not the classical spectrum of a proserotoninergic agent.