People with PTSD could benefit from fear reducing medication

Post-traumatic stress disorder has proved difficult to treat in the long term. Mixing psychological therapy with a novel drug could help.

In June, researchers carried out a review to determine whether medication or psychological therapy was the best treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Due to a lack of comparative studies, the researchers were unable to form a conclusion. However, a new study aims to see whether a combination of the two treatment forms could be more effective.

A psychological therapy that doctors often use in PTSD treatment is prolonged exposure therapy, or PE. PE involves exposing people with a traumatic memory to that memory over and over again.

The hope is that, eventually, the individuals will no longer feel frightened when confronted with the memory. Doctors know this principle as fear extinction learning.

While PE is the recommended treatment for PTSD, some people show no signs of improvement. Some who do benefit return to their original state over time.

Finding a way to make PE more effective could be crucial in helping the 8 million people living with PTSD each year cope with traumatic memories. It might also help minimize the sleep difficulties and avoidance that come hand-in-hand with their condition.

Unlearning fear

According to researchers at Linköping University in Sweden, a drug that positively affects the endocannabinoid system could be key. The endocannabinoid system uses the body’s cannabis-type substances to control emotions, such as fear, anxiety, and stress.

The researchers experimented with a specific drug that blocked the fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) enzyme and boosted the levels of anandamide, which is an endocannabinoid in the brain linked to fear and anxiety.

The drug the team used was a FAAH inhibitor that scientists developed initially as a pain reliever. Although it proved ineffective for this purpose, researchers thought it might be able to assist the brain in eradicating unnecessary fear.

So, the team designed a small-scale placebo study where neither the researchers nor the participants would know who was receiving the real medication.

The study appears in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

Source : MedicalNewsToday