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Health - Prozac (fluoxetine)

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About Prozac - Safety - Some people experience mild side effects like nausea, difficulty sleeping, drowsiness, anxiety, nervousness, weakness, loss of appetite, tremors, dry mouth, sweating, decreased sex drive, impotence, or yawning. These tend to go away within a few weeks of starting treatment and, in most cases, aren't serious enough to cause people to stop taking Prozac.
How Prozac Works - Many scientists believe that an imbalance in serotonin, one of these neurotransmitters, may be an important factor in the development and severity of depression. Prozac may help to correct this imbalance by increasing the brain's own supply of serotonin.

Anxiety Medications 2000 -- Lawsuits and Health Risks
- Parents Allege Prozac Caused Son to Commit Suicide
- Doctors and Patients Unaware of Withdrawal Side Effects
  - According to recent research in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, as many as 70 percent of general practitioners and 30 percent of psychiatrists do not know about the side effects of ending serotonin-boosting drugs. Of those who do know, only 20 percent of psychiatrists and 17 percent of general practitioners caution their patients about the proper way to slowly lower the levels of these drugs to come off them.

Patients should be cautioned against driving an automobile or performing hazardous tasks until they are reasonably certain that treatment with fluoxetine does not affect them adversely.
In clinical trials, the most commonly observed adverse events associated with the use of fluoxetine and not seen at an equivalent incidence among placebo treated patients were: CNS complaints, including headache, nervousness, insomnia, drowsiness, fatigue or asthenia, anxiety, tremor, and dizziness or lightheadedness; gastrointestinal complaints, including nausea, diarrhea, dry mouth and anorexia; and excessive sweating.

Depression and Anxiety Volume 8, Issue S1, 1998. Supplement: Ten Years of Fluoxetine

Abstract - PDF Full Text
Economic appraisal of antidepressant pharmacotherapy: critical review of the literature and future directions - Abstract - PDF Full Text

Organization of Teratology Information Services - Teratology is the study of the effects that drugs, medications, chemicals and other exposures may have on the fetus. - Prozac