They might also help to specifically assign patients to treatments that promise to be most effective for a certain individual. Conclusion In conclusion, in the present article we have provided an overview of the results of current neuroimaging studies in fear and anxiety. Studies in human models of anxiety, as well as investigations
in Paclitaxel Anxiety disorder patients consistently implicated the crucial role of the “fear network,” comprising the amygdala, insula, and anterior cingulate cortex, for the development and maintenance of anxietydisorders. Effective psychotherapeutic Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and pharmacological treatments of anxiety seem to specifically alter patterns of brain activation in these structures.
Optimizing the prevention and treatment Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of anxiety disorders is a key goal for contemporary psychiatry, given that these are the most common of the mental disorders, that they increase the risk for comorbid mood and substance use disorders, and that they contribute significantly to
Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the global burden of disease.1,2 Pharmacotherapy likely has the potential to make an important contribution to such interventions. Indeed, there have been a number of advances in the pharmacotherapy of anxiety disorders in recent decades. An important early step was the development of rigorous clinical trial methods to quantify the efficacy and safety of serendipitously discovered agents. A subsequent significant advance Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical was the transition to more focused pharmaceutical development of agents with selective mechanisms of action. More recently, animal laboratory studies and psychobiological clinical research have further advanced our understanding Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of the neural circuitry and molecular systems that underpin the anxiety disorders, and so provided novel treatment targets. Nevertheless, there remain significant challenges in the field. These include various barriers
to appropriate diagnosis and treatment of anxiety disorders, failure of a significant proportion of patients to respond to first-line pharmacotherapy agents, not and an ongoing lack of data on a number of key questions. In this paper we provide a critical review of the pharmacotherapy of anxiety disorders, summarizing advances in the field, as well as pointing out some of the areas that need to be addressed in future work. Generalized anxiety disorder In many ways, developments in the pharmacotherapy of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) reflect the history of the field of anxiety disorders as a whole. Anxiety is a symptom that has been present since the beginning of time, and anxiolytic agents have long been part of the armamentarium of traditional healers and early physicians.