We might all depend on the light bulb more, but we never hear anyone talk about kissing Edison. Maybe the reason for the fondness for Prozac lies behind the nature of this invention. Prozac was first introduced to the US market in January 1988. It took two years for Prozac to gain its 'most prescribed' status. The drug works by increasing brain levels of serotonin , a neurotransmitter that is thought to influence sleep, appetite, aggression and mood.
Neurotransmitters are chemicals that carry messages between nerve cells.
They are secreted by one cell and picked up by receptor proteins on the surface of another. Once the message has been delivered, a neurotransmitter is either destroyed or retrieved into the cell that made it. This process is known as re-uptake. When re-uptake is inhibited, the effect of the serotonin is amplified. It is not entirely known why increasing neurotransmitter levels will reduce the severity of a depression.