Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 18, Issue 35, 2012

Symptom provocation has proved its worth for understanding the pathophysiology of diseases and in general for the development of new therapeutic approaches in the medical field. In the research of anxiety disorders, investigations using experimentally induced panic attacks by various agents, such as sodium lactate, carbon dioxide, cholezystokinine-tetrapetid etc., have a long tradition and allow the exploration Read More

Background: The validity of experimentally induced panic attacks as a model to study the pathophysiology of panic disorder has been questioned. Unspecific, unpleasant and aversive effects as well as specific patterns of psychovegetative symptoms pointing to different subtypes of panic disorder patients have been observed. These findings raise the question of challenge paradigms as a valuable tool to identify different v Read More

It has been well established that the inhalation of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) can induce in humans an emotion closely replicating spontaneous panic attacks, as defined by current psychiatry nosology. The purpose of this review is to provide a critical summary of the data regarding CO2's psychopharmacological properties and underlying mechanisms. The authors review the literature on the human and animal response fo Read More

Visual emotional stimulation is supposed to elicit psycho-vegetative reactions, which are similar to as the ones elicited by exposure to actual experience. Visual stimulation paradigms have been widely used in studies on agoraphobia with and without panic disorder. However, the applied imagery has hardly ever been disorder- and subject- specific. 51 patients with an ICD-10 and DSM-IV diagnosis of agoraphobia with or wi Read More

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common condition for which existing treatments are ineffective for many patients. Recent discoveries in the neurobiology of learning and memory, along with expanding knowledge of how those systems are impacted by the biology of the stress response, have opened new arenas for potential medication treatments for PTSD. We conducted a review of registered clinical trials inv Read More

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has been shown to be an effective intervention for anxiety disorders. However, despite its proven efficacy, some patients fail to respond to an adequate course of treatment. In attempts to improve the efficacy of CBT, researchers have augmented the core learning processes of the intervention with d-cycloserine (DCS), an N-Methyl-D-Aspartate partial agonist. This article reviews the current Read More

Stressful life events and dysfunctional Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal (HPA) axis have been implicated in the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders, including anxiety disorders. This paper attempts to review the existing literature on childhood traumata, recent life events, HPA axis functioning and their relationship in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and So Read More

Panic disorder is a frequent and disabling mental disorder characterized by recurrent periods or abrupt surges of intense fear or discomfort, the panic attacks. The clinical phenomenology of panic attacks suggests a prominent role of a disturbed stress response regulation in the aetiopathology of this disorder. We summarize the results of challenge tests of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis in p Read More

Background: Panic disorder (PD) has a strong genetic component showing high heritability rates and familial aggregation. Moreover, there is evidence for associations between parental PD and patterns of psychopathology. So far, little is known about possible endophenotypes representing premorbid vulnerability markers in high-risk subjects for PD. In the present study, we investigated saccadic eye movement (SEM) as an i Read More

Clinical genetic studies propose a strong genetic contribution to the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders with a heritability of about 30-67%. The present review will give an overview of linkage studies, association studies and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) yielding support for some candidate genes. Additionally, first evidence for gene-environment interactions between candidate genes of anxiety disorders and stress Read More

A large body of research including animal and human studies has confirmed the crucial role of the serotonin (5-HT) system in the regulation of anxiety-related behaviour and traits. In the past decade, the functional status of the 5-HT system in anxiety disorders has been regularly investigated by novel neuroimaging techniques, such as single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission to Read More

In addition to the classical neurotransmitters, neuropeptides represent an important class of modulators for affective behaviors and associated disorders, such as anxiety disorders. Many neuropeptides are abundantly expressed in brain regions involved in emotional processing and anxiety behaviors. Moreover, risk factors for anxiety disorders such as stress modulate the expression of various neuropeptides in the brain. Du Read More

Inflammatory and autoimmune diseases are classically considered as disorders arising from hyper-activation of immunity and hence are treated with drugs that suppress the lymphocyte activation and inflammation. Although this strategy has proven useful to cure symptoms, it rarely can heal the disease and long-term treatments are usually needed. Inflammatory and autoimmune diseases frequently occur also in patients wit Read More

The inflammatory response is of major importance in host defence, but is involved in all acute and chronic diseases. Multiple inflammatory cells and molecules are involved. Among the latter, the Nuclear Factor -κB (NF-κB) has been found to be most important and present in all cell types. NF-B regulates the expression of a large number of genes involved in inflammation. NF-κB plays a key role in the orchestration of the multifac Read More

Inflammation is a highly regulated process involved both in the response to pathogens as well as in tissue homeostasis. In recent years, a complex network of proteins in charge of inflammation control has been revealed by the study of hereditary periodic fever syndromes. Most of these proteins belong to a few families and share the capability of sensing pathogen-associated and damageassociated molecular patterns. B Read More

Celiac disease is a multi-systemic autoimmune disease of the small bowel induced by gluten in genetically predisposed subjects. Highly specific and gluten-dependent production of auto-antibodies targeting self-proteins of the transglutaminase family occurs in the intestinal mucosa. These anti-transglutaminase antibodies are found deposited in intestinal and extra-intestinal tissue where they might exert biological effects, togeth Read More

Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) is an autoimmune disease, due to the immune-mediated destruction of pancreatic β-cells, whose incidence has been steadily increasing during the last decades. Insulin replacement therapy can treat T1DM, which, however, is still associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. For this reason, great effort is being put into developing strategies that could eventually prevent and/or cure thi Read More

Pediatric inflammatory and autoimmune diseases are a wide array of systemic or organ-specific conditions, characterized by an exaggerated immune reactivity, which generally occurs in immunogenetically predisposed children. Among the most important ones, in terms of their diffusion and morbidity in the population worldwide, pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) have to be Read More