Vortioxetine – an antidepressant with a multifunctional mechanism of action
Adam Wysokiński1, Tomasz Sobów2

Depression is one of the most invalidating chronic diseases, and the efficacy of the available antidepressants is limited. Remission is observed in only a third of cases of depressive patients following the use of the first drug. Also a third of patients are drug-resistant which means they do not improve despite the administration of multiple drugs. More and more attention is paid to cognitive dysfunctions (such as attention and memory disorders, executive function disorders, slow information processing) which are one of the key symptoms in the course of depression. These are characterised by a high incidence in depressive patients (up to 94% of all patients affected by the episode of depression and up to 44% of patients in remission) and largely affect their quality of life. Vortioxetine is a new antidepressant, with so-called multifunctional mechanism of action, comprising the inhibition of the serotonin transporter, partial agonism of the 5-HT1A and 5-HT1B receptors, and antagonism of the 5-HT3A and 5-HT7 receptors. Vortioxetine has a well-documented anti-depression efficacy both in short- and long-term therapy. Most available data point to the efficacy of the said antidepressant when administered in the daily dose of 10 mg and more, yet the 10 mg dose has a similar efficacy to 15 or 20 mg. Adverse event profile of vortioxetine may be better than for other antidepressants (mainly for duloxetine and venlafaxine). Beneficial effect of vortioxetine on cognitive impairment which may be independent of its antidepressant action is clinically important and interesting. Moreover, in comparison to other antidepressants, vortioxetine has a good tolerability profile in terms of sexual dysfunction and does not significantly affect the body mass and other metabolic parameters.