Zounds! It's Zulresso and Zuranolone!
Episode description
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/zounds-its-zulresso-and-zuranolone
How excited should we be about the latest class of antidepressants? 1: What is Zulresso?Wikipedia describes Zulresso as “A bat-winged, armless toad with tentacles instead of a face... ” - no! sorry! That’s Zvilpogghua, one of the Great Old Ones from the Lovecraft mythos.
Zulresso is the brand name of allopregnanolone (aka brexanolone), a new medication for post-partum depression. It’s interesting as a potential missing link between hormones and normal mood regulation.
2: What do you mean by “missing link between hormones and normal mood regulation?”Allopregnanolone is a naturally-occuring metabolite of the female hormone progesterone. In 1981, scientists found it was present in unusually high concentrations in the brain (including male brains), suggesting that maybe the brain was making it separately and using it for something.
They did some tests and found that it was a positive allosteric modulator of GABA.