A WIDELY used blood pressure medicine could help people overcome post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The drug seems to make it easier for people to learn to stop being afraid of a past experience. It successfully helped people in a lab test lose a mild fear they had just developed.
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People can experience PTSD after a frightening event, such asĀ an assault or car crash. It can beĀ debilitating, and involves nightmares and flashbacks. Antidepressants and therapy thatĀ lets people remember whatĀ happened while in safe surroundings can both help, butĀ neither works perfectly.
A few years ago, researchers noticed that people who have experienced trauma tend to have fewer PTSD symptoms if they happen to be taking blood pressure medicines that block aĀ hormone called angiotensin.
This hormone is thought to bind to receptor proteins in parts ofĀ the brain involved in learning. When a drug that blocks angiotensin, called losartan, was tested in mice, the animals lost fears learned in the lab, such as a fear of sounds linked to receiving an electric shock, more quickly.
Now Benjamin Becker at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu and his colleagues haveĀ carried out a similar test inĀ people. They trained 59 men toĀ develop a mild fear by giving them a small electric shock whenever they were shown an image of a coloured square.
Electrodes on the participantsā skin showed that they soon began sweating whenever they saw the squareĀ ā a sign of fear or alertness.
The volunteers were then givenĀ either losartan or a placebo tablet. After 90 minutes, they were shown the square again, thisĀ time without shocks, so they would unlearn their fear reaction. The men who received losartan were .
An artificially created fear of aĀ particular shape isnāt as severe or as complex as the symptoms ofĀ PTSD, but the findings are encouraging, says Paul Marvar at George Washington University in Washington DC, who is running aĀ trial of losartan in people who have been diagnosed with the condition. In his study, people areĀ taking the medicine alone forĀ 10 weeks, but another option would be to take it at the same time as having talking therapy.
Another approach for PTSD is finding ways to block the strong fearful memories from forming in the first place. Some groups are researching whether it helps to give beta-blocker drugs to people in hospital emergency rooms who have just experienced trauma.
However, if this works, beta blockers would need to be given straight after trauma, before it isĀ possible to tell if someone is going to develop PTSD. As only a minority of people develop the condition, this would involve giving treatment to people unnecessarily, says Marvar.
This could be prevented ifĀ others are successful in developing tests to identify those who are most likely to get PTSD.
