THE ENDOCANNABINOID SYSTEM PROVIDES AN AVENUE FOR EVIDENCE-BASED TREATMENT DEVELOPMENT FOR PTSD

摘要

To date, drug development in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been opportunistic, building almost exclusively on empirical observations with drugs approved for other indications. A few available drugs (e.g. selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors) provide some benefit in the management of PTSD symptoms and have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of PTSD, but most meta-analytic reviews have concluded that effect sizes are small and there may be relatively little benefit for combat veterans, PTSD patients with early life-trauma or patients with complex PTSD. Popular augmentation strategies using second-generation antipsychotic medication were also recently shown to be ineffective in PTSD. Therefore, there have been increasing efforts to unravel the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie the symptom development in PTSD in order to provide an evidence-based approach in generating the next generation of PTSD treatments and possible PTSD prevention.