Panic disorder is a common and disabling illness for which treatments are too frequently ineffective. Greater knowledge of the underlying biology could aid the discovery of better therapies. Although panic attacks occur unpredictably, the ability to provoke them in the laboratory with challenge protocols provides an opportunity for crucial insight into the neurobiology of panic. Two of the most...

OBJECTIVE To assess the effectiveness of clonazepam, in a fixed dose (2 mg/day), compared with placebo in the treatment of panic disorder patients. METHOD 24 panic disorder patients with agoraphobia were randomly selected. The diagnosis was obtained using the structured clinical interview for DSM-IV. All twenty-four subjects were randomly assigned to either treatment with clonazepam (2 mg/day...

Basic research involving animal models is an important tool to improve our understanding of clinical conditions related with anxiety and panic attacks. In fact, animal models have been used to study several paradigms on analogous and homologous elements of human anxiety phenomena. However, the direct transposition (translation) to clinical practice of the results obtained with animal models may...

BACKGROUND The sympathetic nervous system has long been believed to be involved in the pathogenesis of panic disorder, but studies to date, most using peripheral venous catecholamine measurements, have yielded conflicting and equivocal results. We tested sympathetic nervous function in patients with panic disorder by using more sensitive methods. METHODS Sympathetic nervous and adrenal medull...

Doxapram is a respiratory stimulant thought to act by stimulating medullary neurones and carotid oxygen receptors (Kato and Buckley 1964). It changes neither oxygen uptake nor CO2 production, but produces substantial hyperventilation (Calvedey et al 1983). Hyperventilation occurs during naturally occurring or pharmacologically induced panic attacks, and perhaps also in panic patients between at...