Eric Rasmusen’s Weblog

A friend told me he was benefiting from the non-prescription drug 5-Hydroxytryptophan, which works a bit like an SSRI, except it isn’t a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, but is supposed to help produce more serotonin. This is an interesting drug from a regulatory point of view. From Wikipedia:

5-Hydroxytryptophan or 5-HTP is a precursor to the neurotransmitter serotonin and an intermediate in tryptophan metabolism. It is marketed in the United States and other countries as a dietary supplement for use as an antidepressant, appetite suppressant, and sleep aid….

In recent years 5-HTP has been sold by health food companies as an alternative treatment for depression and mood disorders. Its role as an intermediary in the biosynthesis of serotonin indicates that this chemical may indeed be effective in treating these and other serotonin-related disorders, but there is some debate on the conclusions of the clinical trials which have been carried out using the drug.

5-HTP is also used as a supplement by users of MDMA (ecstasy) to help replenish depleted serotonin, in an attempt to alleviate to a degree the depression and overall mental unsettlement in the days following MDMA usage. 5-HTP is less commonly used immediately before the use of MDMA as a means to both further reduce the negative psychological effects of depleted serotonin, and as an attempt to boost the effects of MDMA. Anecdotal reports seem to indicate this is largely placebo with some users reporting a moderate muting of the MDMA effect….

Instead of interrupting the recycling of serotonin as in the case of SSRIs, and instead of preventing the end consumption of serotonin as in the case of MAOIs, 5-HTP supplements provide more raw material that may be used in the body’s natural serotonin production process …

The body’s usual source for manufacturing 5-HTP is tryptophan, an amino acid found in many foods, turkey being the most cited example. Tryptophan was also sold as a supplement in health food stores until a contaminated shipment, which resulted in 1500 cases of eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome and over 30 deaths, prompted the United States Food and Drug Administration to ban it as an over-the-counter supplement. As a response to this ban, health supplement producers decided to market 5-HTP in its place. Recently, however, as noted above, pharmaceutical grade L-tryptophan has become available “over the counter” in the U.S.

Wikipedia says this in its article on tryptophan:

In 1989, a large outbreak of a new, disabling, and in some cases deadly autoimmune illness called eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome (EMS) was traced to L-tryptophan. The bacterial culture used to synthesize tryptophan by a major Japanese manufacturer, Showa Denko KK, had recently been synthesized to increase tryptophan production; with the higher tryptophan concentration in the culture medium, the purification process had also been streamlined to reduce costs, and a purification step that used charcoal absorption to remove impurities had been omitted. This allowed another bacterial metabolite through the purification, resulting in the presence of an end-product contaminant responsible for the toxic effects. The FDA was unable to establish with certainty that this was the sole cause of the outbreak. Tryptophan was banned from sale in the US, and other countries followed suit.

Tryptophan is just an essential amino acid, one in the genetic code. So I’m surprised these chemicals help with serotonin, since the problem for depression must be that some regulator of serotonin synthesis isn’t working properly, not that there isn’t enough raw material.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 17th, 2006 at 3:37 pm and is filed under G406: Reg, Science, Thoughts-New, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.