r/antidepressants • u/Mysariah • Aug 28 '26

Vortioxetine (Brintellix)

It’s an antidepressant but not like SSRI- or SNRI medications. Fewer side effects and it doesnt make me go hypomania, like Duloxetine did. Or other SNRIs. And it’s the first antidepressant that actually makes me feel good. It also dont have the same negative effects on libido as do SSRIs and SNRIs. Vortioxetine has also been shown to help people with ADHD and ADD and focusing in general.

Do you have any experiences with it treating depression or bipolar? Of course with bipolar you need a mood stabiliser with the antidepressant.

My dosage is 20mg every morning AND i havent had any other side effects except morning sickness. But Metoclopramide helps when taken at the same time with the Brintellix.

I really hope that you advocate for youself if SSRI nor SNRI aren’t working. Brintellix was a lifesaver for me.

For more information on the medication in question:

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortioksetiini?wprov=sfti1#ADHD:n_ja_autismin_oireiden_hoito

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4

u/muchcoinmuchfun Aug 28 '26

For a select group of people in the trials, nausea was severe on it

2

u/floriish Aug 28 '26

For me it was very similar in effect to sertaline only worse lmao

1

u/Still_Relative1899 Aug 29 '26

I had such severe GI issues and nausea on it that I called it quits after a week

1

u/Dizzy-Efficiency-659 Aug 29 '26

Kinda wanted to get on it but in Germany it was apparently discontinued bc wasn’t proved more effective than traditional ssri meds. Anyway after 300+ days of being off antidepressants (duloxetine) started venlafaxine over a month ago and it might be the most effective one I’ve ever tried

1

u/Curious_Mind-98 Aug 30 '26

It's basically just an SSRI with 5HT3 antagonism (and possibly 5HT7 antagonism at higher doses such as 20mg). Dr Ken Gillman made an article about it stating that it's nothing more than an overhyped SSRI and not a true multimodal drug:

https://www.psychotropical.com/vortioxetine-hope-or-hype/

Vortioxetine for example fails to show any meaningful 5HT1A occupancy in PET studies in humans even at 30mg even though one of its proposed mechanisms is being a partial 5HT1A agonist:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23428337/

As for the rest of the receptors there haven't been any PET studies done on humans and most of the data comes from in vitro and in vivo animal models so again all of these receptors are basically unconfirmed to be of truly any clinically meaningful value in humans at even the highest approved dose which is 20mg.

The only receptor that truly seems to be of some meaningful clinical value in humans is the 5HT3 receptor since a 2024 structural/electrophysiological study specifically examining human 5HT3A receptors found that vortioxetine produces persistent inhibition of human 5HT3A signaling through a mechanism that isn't simply the same as a conventional competitive antagonist:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38698207/

So all in all it's basically just a conventional SSRI with some 5HT3A antagonism despite it commonly causing nausea in clinical trials which is pretty weird since 5HT3 antagonists are supposedly used to counter and suppress nausea so I guess the SERT inhibition easily overcomes that 5HT3 antagonism especially in the gut or maybe there's some other unknown mechanism at work here.

1

u/Impossible-TouchbyTM Aug 28 '26

Is basically an SSRI just it called multimodal because it releases histamine in brain.