Mice lose the blues quickly with experimental drug

Speedy relief from depression may one day come in the form of a new family of compounds. Two new antidepressant molecules start to work in just days — not the weeks or months that current antidepressants take to kick in, a study in mice suggests.

“It’s a totally new and, for me, a very unexpected way to produce rapid antidepressive action,” says neuroscientist Scott Thompson of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.