New drug to fight PTSD
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People with post-traumatic stress disorder appear to have lower levels of a specific kind of brain chemical known as serotonin 1B, and targeting this with drugs could lead to the first treatments specifically targeting the disorder, US researchers said on Monday.
Currently, doctors use antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs to treat PTSD, but these are largely ineffective and were never specifically developed to treat the disorder, in which trauma victims suffer from recurrent memories of trauma, intense guilt or worry, angry outbursts and bad dreams.
“The medications we have these days are not working for PTSD,” said Dr. Alexander Neumeister of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Archives of General Psychiatry. <http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle08.asp?xfile=data/openspace/2011/September/openspace_September8.xml§ion=openspace>
For the study, researchers performed positron emission tomography or PET scans of 49 PTSD patients whose conditions arose from a variety of traumatic events, including childhood abuse, domestic violence and military service.
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