PROZAC FOR KIDS
Children in the US can now be given the antidepressant Prozac. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration approved prescription of the drug for children aged between 7 and 17 with either depression or obsessive compulsive disorder. Made by the drugs giant Eli Lilly, Prozac is the first of a class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors to be approved for use by minors. The potential market is huge, with doctors estimating that 25 per cent of children and 8 per cent of adolescents in the US have depression.
MONKEY TRIAL ENDS
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A public inquiry in Britain to decide the fate of a controversial international primate research centre drew to a close this week. The proposed centre at the University of Cambridge would use research on monkeys to identify and test new treatments and drugs for brain diseases such as Alzheimer鈥檚. But animal welfare groups challenged the scientific rationale for the project. The final decision on whether to give the centre the go-ahead is expected within months.
FEROCIOUS FIRES
Fires in Amazonian forests are destroying far more trees than had been thought, meaning they release more than twice as much carbon dioxide as expected. Estimates of the number of trees killed by fires in the Amazon have long been based on counts of surviving trees up to two years after a fire. But when Jos Barlow at the University of East Anglia in Norwich and his team studied trees throughout the Central Brazilian Amazon, they found that many of the larger, thicker-barked trees took three years to die.