PANIC DISORDER IS THE MOST COMMON TYPE OF ANXIETY DISORDER, AND ITS MOST COMMON EXPRESSION IS PANIC ATTACKS CHARACTERIZED WITH SUDDEN ATTACKS OF ANXIETY WITH NUMEROUS SYMPTOMS, INCLUDING PALPITATIONS, TACHYCARDIA, TACHYPNEA, NAUSEA, AND VERTIGO: ie, cardiovascular, gastroenterologic, respiratory, and neuro-otologic symptoms. In clinical practice, panic disorder manifests with isolated gastroent...

Our aim was to observe the induction of panic attacks by a hyperventilation challenge test in panic disorder patients (DSM-IV) and their healthy first-degree relatives. We randomly selected 25 panic disorder patients, 31 healthy first-degree relatives of probands with panic disorder and 26 normal volunteers with no family history of panic disorder. All patients had no psychotropic drugs for at ...

Anxiety sensitivity (AS), which refers to the tendency to interpret anxiety-related bodily sensations as having potentially harmful somatic, psychological or social consequences, has been proposed as a vulnerability factor for the development of panic disorder (PD). The current study examined the anxiety sensitivity levels in children of parents with panic disorder. Children of panic disorder p...

Because respiratory complications arising from common anxiety medications may contraindicate pharmacological intervention in patients with asthma, behavioral intervention is a vital component of treating anxiety successfully in these patients. Previous research suggests behavioral treatment may reduce panic symptoms and asthma medication use while subsequently increasing quality of life in pati...

BACKGROUND Panic disorder is one of the anxiety disorders, and anxiety is associated with some locomotor activity changes such as "restlessness". However, there have been few studies on locomotor activity in panic disorder using actigraphy, although many studies on other psychiatric disorders have been reported using actigraphy. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the rel...

BACKGROUND Interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT) seems to be as effective as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in the treatment of major depression. Because the onset of panic attacks is often related to increased interpersonal life stress, IPT has the potential to also treat panic disorder. To date, a preliminary open trial yielded promising results but there have been no randomized controlled tr...

OBJECTIVE The authors examined possible cerebral gray matter abnormalities in patients with panic disorder. METHOD Gray matter concentration in 18 panic disorder outpatients and 18 healthy subjects was compared by using a voxel-based morphometry approach. RESULTS Gray matter density of the left parahippocampal gyrus was significantly lower in patients with panic disorder compared with healt...

Panic disorder involves both recurrent unexpected panic attacks and persistent concern about having additional attacks. Electrical stimulation of the dorsal periaqueductal gray (dPAG) is an animal model of both panic attack and panic disorder, whereas contextual fear conditioning represents a model of anticipatory anxiety. Previous research indicated that anxiety has an inhibitory effect on pan...

There is considerable evidence that people with panic disorder utilise the physical health care system more frequently than people in the general community and so incur for themselves, and impose on the public health care system, considerably greater costs. Although this is probably because of specific characteristics to do with panic disorder, it may also be a function of having any anxiety di...

This paper reviews the literature on the pharmacotherapy of panic disorder, in order to address the questions (1) what is the first-line pharmacotherapy of choice for panic disorder?, (2) for how long should maintenance pharmacotherapy be continued, and (3) what is the optimal approach to the treatment-refractory patient with panic disorder. A MEDLINE search (1966-2003) was undertaken to collat...