Panic Disorder Seeks More Specific Drugs for Treatment : Might the Amygdala Be the Best Target?

Panic disorder is a common psychiatric disorder, with generally effective pharmacologic treatments for most patients. However, a subset of patients do not respond,  and roughly 25% of patients have adverse effects. In this podcast, based on his guest editorial published in the September-October 2022 issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, Dr. Antonio Nardi makes the case that the next era of treatments may be inhibitor specific. Because of the amygdala's essential role in the control of anxiety responses, Dr. Nardi suggests that it may be the key to developing such therapies. While acknowledging that his editorial focuses on selective molecules for α2/3-GABAAR, Nardi expresses hope that the two classes of GABAkines in clinical development, studied in conjunction with models of carbon dioxide inhalation in healthy volunteers, might represent the beginning of a new era in treatment for panic disorder.