PROZAC AND CLAMS
Peter Fong prescribes Prozac to fingernail clams and zebra mussels.
The popular antidepressant might not cheer up the clams or mussels, but it did jump-start their reproductive behavior, prompting the fingernail clams to spawn in synchrony and the mussels to release sperm or eggs. That's according to research by Fong, a biologist at Gettysburg College, who did the research with two students, Lynette D'Urso and Peter Huminski.
Fong has two papers on the research: "Induction and Potentiation of Parturition in Fingernail Clams by Selective Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors," which is featured in The Journal of Experimental Zoology (February 1998); and "Zebra Mussel Spawning Is Induced in Low Concentrations of Putative Serotonin Re-Uptake Inhibitors," which has been accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of The Biological Bulletin of Woods Hole.
The trigger for spawning is serotonin, a natural biochemical that nerve cells use to communicate, and the antidepressants Prozac, Luvox, and Paxil make more serotonin available, says Fong. In humans, all three drugs block the molecular mopping up of serotonin, making more of the compound available for transmitting neural messages. Serotonin regulates behaviors such as appetite, sleep, arousal, and depression.
The work is of practical importance because synchronous spawning allows clam farmers to collect clam eggs and sperm and raise a uniform crop of offspring. They can get the same result by exposing the clams to serotonin itself, but serotonin is too expensive for most clam farms in developing nations, says Fong.
"You can use much less Prozac to get the same spawning response," says Fong. Currently, clam farmers use serotonin at 100,000 to 1 million times the concentrations at which Prozac and Luvox produced results in Fong's experiments. ###
Editors & Reporters: You can reach Dr. Fong at 717-337-6154 (office). Editors and reporters may get copies of the papers by calling Steve Infanti of Dick Jones Communications at 814-867-1963.
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