From recent advances in underlying neurocircuitry of fear and anxiety to promising pharmacotherapies for PTSD: The saga of heart, sex and the developing brain.
Neuropharmacology July 1, 2023 Joanna Dabrowska 6 citations
Current medications for anxiety disorders and PTSD have limited effectiveness, and no new anxiety drug has been approved since the 1980s. This review discusses promising approaches being revisited or newly developed, including serotonergic psychedelics as low-dose adjuncts to psychotherapy and glucocorticoids given shortly after trauma to interfere with fear memory consolidation. Three key obstacles are identified: too few preclinical studies on fear processing in female animals despite higher anxiety rates in women, poor translation of knowledge about stress effects on fear circuitry across the lifespan into clinical practice, and limited understanding of canonical fear circuitry in adaptive versus maladaptive fear processing. Interoceptive signals linked to emotion regulation may offer new treatment avenues, especially for PTSD with cardiovascular dysregulation.