Welcome to Rosam Franklin University College of Pharmacy Top 200 Drugs podcast.

This podcast is produced by the pharmacy faculty members to supplement study material for students learning the top 200 drugs.

We're hoping that our real-life clinical pearls and discussions

from practicing pharmacists will help you study for your next drug quiz. And now on to the show.

Welcome to week three of Rosalind Franklin University's Top 200 Dr. Podcast, Spring Edition.

I'm your co-host Dr. Kane.

And I'm Dr. Holmes.

And this week we're talking about antidepressants.

We have a number of different antidepressants,

but most of them make up the SSRI category.

Could you just tell us a little bit about what an SSRI is,

why it works, why it's important?

So SSRIs work in the treatment of depression and all kinds of anxiety disorders, such as

OCD and generalized anxiety disorder, by controlling the amount of serotonin in the synapse of the neuron.

So basically, we're keeping enough of the neurotransmitter serotonin where we

want it to be in the brain to really help alleviate symptoms of depression and anxiety.

So in the term it says selective. What does that mean or why is that important?

That means that we don't have as much what we like to call dirty pharmacology where we're hitting other neurotransmitters.

So we're specifically using serotonin to alleviate these symptoms and not hitting a lot of the other neurotransmitters that may be responsible for a lot of side effects.

So in general, it's supposed to be more of a clean profile just looking

at serotonin not having some of the bad side effects associated with others.

Now I know that the FDA has released a boxed warning for all SSRIs about suicidal risk

...