CLEVELAND, Ohio — A failed search for answers about high blood pressure at the Cleveland Clinic became a landmark moment in the treatment of depression and anxiety.
When Clinic physician-scientist Dr. Irvine Page and his colleagues isolated the chemical serotonin in 1948, they found it wasn’t the key to hypertension they had expected. Instead, the discovery eventually led to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, better known as SSRIs, used in Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro and other widely-used drugs that increase serotonin levels in the brain to help regulate mood.
“It just shows that you can be pursuing something in science, and what you end up with is not what you were thinking, but very significant,” said Dr. Paul DiCorleto, retired director of the research division at the Clinic. DiCorleto didn’t work with Page, but spoke to him frequently before Page’s death at age 90 in 1991…