Snails can test antidepressants

It’s a rainy day and you’ve just planted some petunias in the garden. Unknowingly you’ve created an earthly version of snail heaven. Snail hormones begin circulating and hearts beating.

Strangely, the hormone that activates the snail heart is serotonin, the psychotropic chemical so beloved by antidepressant manufacturers for its ability to quieten the human brain.

The snail heart copes well with the onslaught of serotonin. La Trobe pharmacologist Michelle Gibson has indentified two serotonin receptors in the snail heart and is investigating changes in intracellular chemicals.

These studies may have implications for humans as the snail heart could be used as a model to study, for example, the cardiovascular side effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, drugs like the antidepressant Prozac and some diet pills.

Dr Gibson says that snail heart tissue is much easier to obtain than human tissue and works as a good model. Snails hearts have a single auricle receiving blood from the lung and a single ventricle that pumps blood to the rest of the body, much like it does in humans.

Her results were presented to the Australian Health and Medical Research Congress in Brisbane.

(Source: La Trobe University: April 2009)