Hope for anxiety sufferers
Posted Dec 19, 2010 8:11 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
There’s new hope for those who suffer from a common mental health issue.
Five years of research by a Neuroscientist at the University of Alberta, in conjunction with a colleague from the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University, have led to discoveries that could well mean new, more effective treatment of anxiety.
William Colmers and his American colleague Janice Urban have found that a previously unknown mechanism in the brain that controls anxiety. They’re hoping to develop new medications that would influence neurons in that area of the brain and block anxiety-producing messages.
The Calgary Herald reports Valium and Prozac are two drugs currently used for treatment. But they don’t target that area of the brain well and have side effects, such as being addictive and causing drowsiness.
The findings are published in The Journal of Neuroscience.
