Bone Fractures
Antidepressants may be bad for your bones. People who take some selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors have been found to have a higher risk of fractures, but it wasn’t clear whether this was due to the drug or their depression. Now researcher Patricia Ducy and colleagues have found that giving mice fluoxetine – the active ingredient in Prozac – for six weeks causes them to lose bone mass. The team identified a two-stage process by measuring bones, blood and gene activity. During the first three weeks, bones grew stronger as the fluoxetine impaired osteoclasts, cells that usually deplete bone tissue. But by six weeks, the higher levels of serotonin prompted by the drug disrupted the ability of the hypothalamus region of the brain to promote bone growth. Ducy says this twophase pattern is also seen in people.