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Accutane And Suicide Reports

Author:  Cory Evans   2008-05-19  Word Count: 530  Category: Medicine  Print  Copy

Accutane is a member of the drug type known as retinoids, which have been demonstrated to affect the way the body reads genes. Use of the drug while pregnant is known to damage fetuses and reduce the quantity of brain cells that they generate. This is why precautions are taken to ensure that female who are pregnant or who may become pregnant do not use the drug. However, recent studies suggest that brain-cell generation can be equally important in adolescents and adults. Researchers at the University of Baths and the University of Texas in Austin express Accutane can also interfere with the body's synthesis of the mood hormone serotonin.
While experience from the more than 13 million consumers of Accutane worldwide suggests that only 5 to 10 percent suffer from side effects, retinoids have also been implied in connections to Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, so specialists are eager to know how the drug works.
Depression Linked to Acne Treatment
Acne treatment with the drug isotretinoin (Accutane) has been implicated in an elevation in feelings of depression among adolescent users, and while the link has never been demonstrated, scientists have gathered evidence through an animal study.
Although researcher Dr. Sarah Bailey noted that it is impossible to ask a mouse if it is depressed, its behaviour can be analyzed and modeled with two tests. The first involves causing the young mice to experience stress by forcing it to swim, while the other one produces stress by suspending the mice by its tail.
Acne Cure Tested for Side Effects
Normally, a mouse will swim, climb and struggle, and only periodically stop in a phase of resignation. A depressed mouse will remain in its resigned state longer than one that is healthy. The mice receiving human-equivalent doses of Accutane tended to show increased depression-related behavior.
Accutane producer Roche claims, "While no causal relationship has been established between Accutane and either depression or suicide, we are permanently inspecting all available safety databases on Accutane worldwide." However, the World Health Organization has confirmed 720 cases of mental complications associated to the administration of Accutane, including 84 suicides and suicide attempts.
The allegation that isotretinoin promoted depression and suicide has won a few lawsuits, and is in part responsible for the strict control of the drug, especially in the US. Various case studies of depression, suicidal tendencies, suicide attempt, and suicide in people treated with the acne skin care isotretinoin have been sent to the U.S. FDA Adverse Events Reporting System, with 431 cases reported between 1982 and May 2001 - of these 37 patients had committed suicide.
Idiosyncratic Effects From Acne Skin Care
Studies have shown that people with acne, the population group eligible to undergo isotretinoin treatment, have an elevated risk of clinical depression compared with the general population. Isotretinoin related depression is "an idiosyncratic side effect." Usually anxiety can bring on acne and depression, creating more anxiety. Correspondingly, treatment of severe acne using isotretinoin has been shown to reduce anxiety and depression.
One experiment utilising positron emission tomography (PET) demonstrated functional brain imaging changes in patients using isotretinoin, however the clinical significance of this finding is unclear.

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