A drug believed to have no side effects in humans and used for years to treat tuberculosis has been shown to alleviate symptoms of post-traumatic stress, and Bay Area researchers seek to test its effectiveness in returning war veterans.
Researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center say they hope that a combination of therapy and the TB medication will give relief more quickly from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, and its effects will last longer.
The drug — called D-cycloserine, or DCS — belongs to a class of compounds that affect NMDA receptors, which act on the underlying mechanism of the brain that controls learning and memory.
"It's a way of tapping into the circuitry of the brain that unlearns the fear response," said Dr. Charles Marmar, chief investigator at the VA and vice chairman of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.
Recent studies have indicated that DCS accelerates the rate at which fears and phobias can be extinguished. DCS is a low-cost and widely available medication that has no side effects in humans.
[Editor's Note: We encourage people to exercise caution before volunteering for drug trials. The track record for such things is not a perfect 10.]
del.icio.us
Digg this
