Active clinical trials for "Panic Disorder"

A diverse body of research has implicated the amygdalo-cortical circuitry in the pathophysiology of anxiety disorders. For example, one model of PTSD posits exaggerated amygdala responsivity to threat-related stimuli as well as deficient top-down modulation of amygdala responses by specific cortical regions, including the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex, subcallosal cortex, and hippocampus. The investigators propose to investigate the pathophysiology of several specific anxiety disorders, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Panic Disorder (PD), and Specific Phobia(SP), by using cognitive activation paradigms and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to probe the function and structure of implicated amygdalo-cortical circuitry.

The purpose of this study is to explore the changes in metabolic parameters in patients treated with escitalopram for six months for major depression, generalized anxiety disorder or panic disorder, with or without agoraphobia.

The importance of the proposed research project derives from a steady accumulation of research findings on the relationship between respiration and anxiety. The relationship between panic disorder and abnormalities in respiration has been recognized for more than 10 years. Increased sensitivity to CO2 exposure in panic disorder represents the most consistent finding supporting this relationship. The current proposal follows naturally from three sets of recent research findings in the area of panic disorder. First, our group has recently shown that children with anxiety disorders, like adults with panic disorder, exhibit increased sensitivity to CO2. Second, other researchers have shown that psychiatrically healthy relatives of patients with panic disorder also exhibit increased sensitvity to CO2. Finally, our group has also recently shown that children of adults with panic disorder exhibit high rates of anxiety disorders, particularly separation anxiety disorder, the childhood anxiety disorder which exhibits the highest degree of CO2 sensitivity. These three findings suggest that children of parents with panic disorder may exhibit a latent vulnerability to panic disorder, manifested as increased sensitivity to CO2. A secondary feature of the proposed research project derives from a steady accumulation of research findings in basic science literature outlining the parts of the brain that mediate fear and anxiety in animals. It may be possible to use insights from research on the brain basis of fear in animals to develop methods for assessing the brain basis of fear in humans. Moreover, work in animals notes changes in brain systems that mediate fear and anxiety across development. If development. If developmentally sensitive methods could be used to study fear in children, it may also be possible to greatly enhance our understanding of the manner in which the relationship between brain function and fear changes as children age. If similarities could be demonstrated across animals and humans in these areas, new insights on potential treatments for anxiety could be more readily transferred from the laboratory to the clinic. A second goal of the current proposal is to refine two neuropsychological probes that are thought to assess functional aspects of brain systems implicated in fear and anxiety across various species, from rodents to humans.

The goal of this observational study is to compare socio-demographic and clinical features in patients affected by Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and by Panic Disorder (PD). The main questions it aims to answer are: which socio-demographic/clinical markers are associated to GAD or PD diagnosis? which factors are associated with a longer duration of untreated illness (DUI) in GAD and in PD? Participants will signed a written informed consent and socio-demographic/clinical variables will be retrospectively collected. Researchers will compare GAD and PD groups in terms of socio-demographic and clinical features, including DUI, to better characterize the two disorders and to investigate factors associated to a longer DUI.

It is known that the treatment of panic disorder with medication and psychotherapy are both effective. Representative as a treatment for panic disorder, Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are recommended as first-line treatment of panic disorder. In general, the initial reaction rate of panic disorder medication known to be frequently stopped early recurrence 70-80% It's too early, it is recommended that the duration of drug treatment for at least one year to be long-lasting. But whether it is appropriate for the duration of drug treatment to maintain a certain extent remains controversial, and maintain the medication for more than one year, even if the long-term effects known to be approximately 50% less than beyond being negative when remission based. Meanwhile, the typical method for the treatment of panic disorder psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy (Cognitive behavioral therapy) and looked comparable to the effect of the drug in the treatment of the known, especially in recent years when the combined treatment with medication can increase the long-term treatment of sexual reported that there's has been the subject of attention. But prospectively compare the long-term effects of these two treatments, research, especially the research about the long-term effects of the combined treatment with the drug treatment of panic disorder is very low, and almost nil is Researchers, drug treatment and the effect of the combined treatment in patients with panic disorder over two years prospective study to compare the plans were. And verification, the researchers performed only through this study by comparing the long-term effects of the combined treatment with medication combined treatment of medication to be more effective than if the reaction to the long-term treatment of panic disorder that can affect the clinical and biological factors navigate to evaluate them. In addition, long-term observational study, panic disorder patients' subjective quality of life actually improved to some extent on the map together proven to.

Anxiety disorders are characterized by exaggerated levels of fear that are not proportional to the actual level of threat. More specifically, anxiety patients have marked deficits in the downregulation of fear reactions during situations of objective safety. Pre-clinical research on Pavlovian fear conditioning and extinction has discovered that fear downregulation stems from areas in the prefrontal cortex (the ventro-medial prefrontal cortex, vmPFC) that recruit intercalated cells in the amygdala to inhibit its central nucleus, which is responsible for a variety of behavioral expressions of fear (Milad & Quirk, 2012). Accordingly, functional magnetic resonance imaging studies (fMRI) revealed reduced vmPFC activity coupled with increased fear reactions during situations of objective safety in anxiety patients (Milad et al., 2009). Another core symptom of anxiety disorders, though much less investigated, is the excessive avoidance of situations that trigger the fears. These 'safety behaviors' often interfere with daily life activities and valued goals in life, and they are thought to perpetuate the exaggerated levels of fear by precluding opportunities to learn that the feared situations are actually not dangerous. Surprisingly, experimental research on avoidance behaviors in anxiety patients is virtually non-existent. This experiment modifies the Pavlovian fear conditioning procedure to include avoidance, and explores the behavioral and neural processes of this type of fear regulation in anxiety patients (trans-diagnostically) and healthy individuals.

Panic disorder(PD)is a disabling psychiatric condition associated with significant impairment in psychosocial, occupational functioning and quality of life, as mentioned by mogotsi et al. So, most patients with panic disorder suffers from the consequences of the impairment in occupational function. This impairment is not only individual problem, but also social one. Since productivity is very important item required to employees, lost productive time among workers with psychiatric illness should be reduced by the proper management. But few data were reported in this field by now.

Anxiety disorders are common disorders, which pose a major burden to society and the individual. An anxiety disorder may be treated with medication, in particular with antidepressants such as the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). However, much of what is known about antidepressants is derived from research in depression rather than anxiety. In recent years, researchers have found that antidepressants are more effective for severely depressed patients than they are for patients with milder symptoms. It is possible that a similar relationship between symptom severity and antidepressant efficacy exists for anxiety disorders, but there is currently little evidence available to answer this question. As antidepressants are frequently prescribed to patients with mild or moderate anxiety, a clear understanding of their effectiveness across the severity range is vital to inform treatment decisions. Therefore, the purpose of this meta-analysis is to examine whether initial symptom severity affects antidepressant efficacy for anxiety disorders.

The purpose of this study is to determine abnormal neuro-hormonal mechanisms that may impair the ability to feel full and which therefore, may lead to obesity.

Learning includes the ability to generalize to new situations and respond to similar, yet not identical stimuli. In previous work, focused on stimulus generalization in healthy volunteers, tones that were negatively reinforced induce wider generalization curves than tones that were positively reinforced, and these in turn induce wider curves than neutral memory (Schechtman et al, 2010). The current study aimed to evaluate those patterns in different clinical disorders (including Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder, MDD, Anxiety disorders (Panic and GAD) and PTSD, and healthy subjects that would be used as a control), with consideration whether those patterns are unique to any specific disorder or state. The generalization patterns evaluation would conduct twice though enable to compare the stability of those patterns during the course of the illness (i.e during remission compared to acute state). The basic paradigm based on conditioning of a tone (sound) with unpleasant noise, and extinction of that conditioning afterword. During the 60 minutes of evaluation, the capability to discriminate between the original tone and similar but not identical tones, and the tendency to categorize similar tones as identical to the original tone. A neutral tone without conditioning will be used as reference. The clinical diagnosis will conduct by a senior psychiatrist, and the state would be evaluated using standard questionnaires