Lexapro
An oral daily antidepressant used to treat depression and generalized anxiety disorder.
Where Escitalopram is approved
All regulators →Of the three regulators tracked here, the first to approve Escitalopram was Canada, on 14 Aug 2012.
From the regulators' own registers: FDA Drugs@FDA, the EMA medicines list and Health Canada's Notice of Compliance database. Dates are the first listed approval of a product containing only this substance; combination products and nationally authorised EU medicines are not counted.
What health systems spend on Escitalopram
All medicines →From NHSBSA Prescription Cost Analysis (Open Government Licence v3.0) and CMS State Drug Utilization Data. Both are gross amounts: neither system publishes its discounts or rebates per drug. Products combining several substances are not counted here.
How Escitalopram works
All drug targets →- Serotonin transporter inhibitor InhibitorTarget: SLC6A4 solute carrier family 6 member 4✓ In ChEMBL and the Guide to Pharmacology
- AgitationPhase 3
- Alzheimer diseasePhase 3
- AnxietyPhase 3
- Bipolar disorderPhase 3
- Breast cancerPhase 3
- Burning mouth syndromePhase 3
- Depressive disorderPhase 3
- Generalized anxiety disorderPhase 3
- Major depressive episodePhase 3
- Obsessive-compulsive disorderPhase 3
Mechanisms and diseases from ChEMBL via the Open Targets Platform (release 26.09), ChEMBL record CHEMBL1508, CC BY-SA 3.0. Targets checked against the IUPHAR/BPS Guide to PHARMACOLOGY (2026.3), ligand 7177, CC BY-SA 4.0. Trial phases are not approvals: approved uses are shown from the regulators' own records where we hold them.
Patient leaflets for Escitalopram
The package leaflet is the official guide for patients that comes with every medicine. These links go to the regulators that publish it.
- IEIreland: 39 products on the HPRA listEach product record links to the HPRA, which publishes the leaflet and SmPC.
- UKUnited Kingdom: Search MHRA ProductsPatient information leaflets and SmPCs for UK-licensed products.
- USUnited States: Search DailyMedFDA-approved labels, including patient and medication guides.
Leaflets differ between brands and countries; always read the one that comes with your own medicine. This is regulatory information, not medical advice.
Reference identifiers for Escitalopram
- ATC code
- N06AB10
- ChEMBL
- CHEMBL1508
- DrugBank
- DB01175
- PubChem CID
- 146570
- CAS number
- 128196-01-0
- FDA UNII
- 4O4S742ANY
- Wikidata
- Q423757
- Wikipedia
- Escitalopram
Codes that identify this medicine in other databases, from Wikidata (CC0), matched by its ChEMBL ID. The ATC code is the WHO classification of what the medicine is used for.
What Lexapro is used for
Lexapro is indicated for the treatment of: • major depressive disorder (MDD) in adults and pediatric patients 12 years of age and older. • generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in adults and pediatric patients 7 years of age and older. Lexapro is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) indicated for the: treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD) in adults and pediatric patients 12 years of age and older ( 1 ) treatment of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) in adults and pediatric patients 7 years and older ( 1 )
How it works
12.1 Mechanism of Action The mechanism of antidepressant action of escitalopram, the S-enantiomer of racemic citalopram, is presumed to be linked to potentiation of serotonergic activity in the central nervous system (CNS) resulting from its inhibition of CNS neuronal reuptake of serotonin (5-HT).
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How this page is built
The facts on this page are pulled directly from official U.S. FDA datasets — they are not written from memory. Each field below names the dataset it came from, so you can check it yourself.
- FDA Drug Label (openFDA) ↗ Indications, mechanism of action and pharmacologic class
- Drugs@FDA ↗ First FDA approval date and the company holding the application
- FDA Drug Shortage Database ↗ Current US supply / shortage status
Plain-English summaries and drug-class explainers are written and reviewed by Sreepriya Prasannan (MSc Digital Transformation of Life Sciences (Innopharma Education / Griffith College); MSc & BSc Botany). Data is retrieved automatically from the sources above and cross-checked with AI-assisted verification (Anthropic's Claude) — brand and generic names are matched against the exact FDA product record so that a combination product or a different formulation cannot be mistaken for the drug on this page. An editor reviews the result before publication. We describe this in full in our editorial standards and corrections policy. The FDA data on this page was last retrieved on 11 Oct 2026. How every register is built: methodology · fixes we have made: corrections log.