JBR Letter to the Editor Open Access at PubMed Central

Extensive studies have measured antidepressant-like effects of chemical compounds to discover new drugs for depression treatment or to clarify the mo-lecular mechanisms of depression. Most useful anti-depressants including tricyclics, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (NRIs), serotonin and noradrenaline re-uptake inhibitors (SNRIs), and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) exert antidepressant-like effects in forced swimming test (FST) in mice and rats[1]. How-ever, it remains unanswered whether the observed antidepressant-like effects are real antidepressant ef-fects as seen in those by antidepressant drugs used in clinic. Two questions emerge from this topic: the first question is whether the molecular signaling pathwa