Citation

Graham BM, Langton JM, Richardson R. Br. J. Pharmacol. 2011; 164(4): 1230-1247.

Affiliation

School of Psychology, UNSW, Sydney, NSW, Australia Adult Cancer Program, Prince of Wales Clinical School, UNSW, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1476-5381.2010.01175.x

PMID

21175588

PMCID

PMC3229759

Abstract

Anxiety disorders have a high prevalence, and despite the substantial advances in the psychological treatment of anxiety, relapse is still a common problem. One approach to improving existing psychological treatments for anxiety has been to develop pharmacological agents that can be used to enhance the processes underlying exposure therapy, which is the most commonly used and empirically validated psychological treatment for anxiety during which individuals are taught to appropriately inhibit fear. Animal models of exposure therapy, particularly fear extinction, have proved to be a very useful way of examining the neural and molecular correlates of fear inhibition, which has in turn led to the identification of numerous drugs that enhance these processes in rats. Several of these drugs have subsequently been tested as novel pharmacological adjuncts to exposure therapy in humans with a range of anxiety disorders. The purpose of this review is to outline the key animal models of exposure therapy and to describe how these have been used to develop potential pharmacological adjuncts for anxiety disorders. Drugs that are currently in clinical use, as well as those currently in the preclinical stages of investigation, are described. LINKED ARTICLES This article is part of a themed issue on Translational Neuropharmacology.

Language: en