Investigational Agents in the Treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Kelmendi ◽  
Thomas G. Adams ◽  
Chadi Abdallah ◽  
Irina Esterlis ◽  
Ilan Harpaz-Rotem ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
Traumatic Stress ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Sufficient Data ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Voltage Gated ◽  
Voltage Gated Calcium Channels ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
Investigational Agents ◽  
New Treatments

This chapter highlights the breadth of the range and shallowness of the depth with which novel therapeutics for PTSD have been evaluated. None of the new treatments reviewed in this chapter have sufficient data supporting their efficacy to be strongly recommended for the treatment of PTSD. Nonetheless, the interventional approaches reviewed here are guided by our current understanding of the neurobiology of stress in animals and PTSD in humans. The range of therapeutic targets considered in this chapter reflects our growing appreciation of the complex neurobiology of PTSD. Thus, it should not be surprising that drugs targeting glutamatergic, GABAergic, opiates, glucocorticoids, cannabinoids, and voltage-gated calcium channels are in various stages of evaluation.

scholarly journals Revealing Unknown Benefits of Existing Medications to Aid the Discovery of New Treatments for Post‐Traumatic Stress Disorder

2021 ◽  
pp. n/a-n/a
Author(s):  
David M. Kern ◽  
Rachel E. Teneralli ◽  
Christopher M. Flores ◽  
Gayle M. Wittenberg ◽  
James P. Gilbert ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
Traumatic Stress ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
New Treatments

scholarly journals Shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update

eLife ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Popik ◽  
Felippe Espinelli Amorim ◽  
Olavo B Amaral ◽  
Lucas De Oliveira Alvares
Keyword(s):  
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ◽  
Traumatic Stress ◽  
Memory Retrieval ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Behavioral Approach ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Memory Updating ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
Voltage Gated Calcium Channels ◽  
Post Traumatic

Aversive memories are at the heart of psychiatric disorders such as phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Here, we present a new behavioral approach in rats that robustly attenuates aversive memories. This method consists of ‘deconditioning’ animals previously trained to associate a tone with a strong footshock by replacing it with a much weaker one during memory retrieval. Our results indicate that deconditioning-update is more effective than traditional extinction in reducing fear responses; moreover, such effects are long lasting and resistant to renewal and spontaneous recovery. Remarkably, this strategy overcame important boundary conditions for memory updating, such as remote or very strong traumatic memories. The same beneficial effect was found in other types of fear-related memories. Deconditioning was mediated by L-type voltage-gated calcium channels and is consistent with computational accounts of mismatch-induced memory updating. Our results suggest that shifting from fear to safety through deconditioning-update is a promising approach to attenuate traumatic memories.

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