Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 14, Issue 33, 2008

Anxiety disorders are highly prevalent and disabling disorders, which are commonly treated using pharmacotherapeutic and psychotherapeutic approaches. Benzodiazepines are widely used in the treatment of acute anxiety states whereas both serotonergic acting antidepressants and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) ergic substances represent standard treatments on the long term. Due to the dependence potential o Read More

Anxiety disorders are common in community settings and in primary and secondary medical care. The associated societal burden is considerable, but many of those who might benefit from pharmacological or psychological treatment are not recognised or treated. By contrast, some patients receive unnecessary or inappropriate interventions. Recent evidence-based guidelines for pharmacological management of patients wit Read More

Pharmacological magnetic resonance imaging (phMRI) is a method to study effects of psychopharmacological agents on neural activation. Changes of the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD), the basis of functional MRI (fMRI), are typically obtained at relatively high sampling frequencies. This has more recently been exploited in the field of fMRI by applying independent component analysis (ICA), an explorative data analysis me Read More

With a lifetime prevalence of up to 25% anxiety disorders are among the most frequently occurring psychiatric disorders. The etiology of anxiety is considered to be multifactorial with an interaction of neurobiological, psychological and environmental factors. With regard to neurobiological factors, several neurochemical systems and neuroanatomical circuits have been discussed to be involved. In particular, anxiety might b Read More

Introduction: Data on basal hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenomedullary (HPA) function over controlled treatment trials with serotonergic drugs in anxiety disorders are still rare. Methods: 29 patients with panic disorder participating in a 10 week randomized, controlled trial (paroxetine vs. placebo with exercise or relaxation; N=60) collected urine for cortisol excretion over 3 consecutive nights before start and before termi Read More

In the past decades considerable evidence has emerged that certain so called neuroactive steroids not only act as transcription factors in the regulation of gene expression but may also alter neuronal excitability through interaction with specific neurotransmitter receptors such as γ-aminobutyric acid type A (GABAA), N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) and glutamate receptors. There is growing evidence that neuroactive Read More

Anxiety disorders are common and disabling conditions. Current drug treatment methods have limitations including resistance, delayed efficacy and side effects. The advent of sophisticated imaging techniques and the production of highly selective receptor ligands have increased our knowledge of the biological mechanisms underpinning anxiety. Our aim is to review recent discoveries in important neurological systems Read More

Interest in neuroimmunology and the actions of cytokines in the brain has grown exponentially over the last decade. Cytokines represent a large and rapidly growing group of polypeptides that comprises the interleukins, chemokines, tumor necrosis factors, interferons, and growth and cell stimulating factors [1]. The functions and actions of many of these cytokines in the brain remain to be elucidated, but probably include b Read More

Ischemic stroke is the most frequent cause of persistent neurologic disability in modern Western societies. Albeit it is still not clear whether inflammation is merely an epiphenomenon or rather has a disease-promoting function, accumulating evidence implicates inflammation in many forms of acute neurodegenerative disorders including ischemia. The immune cell influx during a neuropathological event is thought to b Read More

Knowledge of the molecular mechanisms that underlie neuron death following stroke is important to allow the development of effective neuroprotective strategies. Since studies in human stroke are extremely limited due to the inability of collecting post mortem tissue at time points after the onset of stroke where neuronal death occurs, brain ischemia research focuses on information derived from animal models of i Read More

Three major cytokines, namely, tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α), interleukin (IL)-1, and IL-6 are produced by cultured brain cells after various stimuli such as ischemia. Neurones, astrocytes, microglia and oligodendrocytes can produce inflammatory mediators, and cytokine receptors are expressed constitutionally throughout the Central Nervous System (CNS), albeit at low levels. Cytokines are involved in virtually every fa Read More

Despite recent advances in acute stroke therapy, stroke remains the leading cause of severe disability and the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer, in Western countries and Japan. The identification of biomarkers of stroke risk is thus important both for risk prediction and for intervention to avert future events. Although genetic linkage analyses of families and sib-pairs as well as candidate gene and ge Read More