WASHINGTON (June 16, 2014) — Paul Marvar, Ph.D., assistant professor of pharmacology & physiology at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, was recently published in Biological Psychiatry for his research on the underlying mechanisms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Marvar's research built upon recent research by investigators at Emory University, finding that individuals diagnosed with PTSD and treated with angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) exhibited fewer PTSD-like symptoms. This research comes at a crucial time, when new medications for PTSD treatment are greatly needed. Currently, only two FDA-approved medications are available for the treatment of PTSD in the U.S.
“Our current preclinical results show that the ARB losartan, given acutely or chronically to mice, enhances the extinction of fear memory, a process that is disrupted in individuals with PTSD,” said Marvar. “Overall these data provide further support that this class of medications may have beneficial effects on fear memory in PTSD patients.”
Fear extinction is a process by which a memory associated with fear is gradually ‘overwritten’ in the brain by a new memory with no such association. For example, exposure therapy is a form of fear extinction, whereby repeatedly exposing a patient in a safe manner to a feared object or situation slowly reduces or eliminates their fear. A medication that could potentially enhance the extinction of fear would be welcome to the millions of individuals who continue to suffer with symptoms of PTSD.
Future studies are still necessary before clinical use could be recommended, but there is hope that by targeting this pathway, it may provide a safe and powerful adjunctive novel therapy for the treatment of PTSD.
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This Press Releases posted courtesy of Biological Psychiatry. View the full Press Releases
