Carbon dioxide induced panic attacks and short term clonazepam treatment: preliminary study
AIMS: 1. To verify the sensibility of panic patients to a mixture of 35% CO2 and 65% O2. 2. To determine if a ten days treatment with clonazepam attenuates the panic attacks induced by the inhalation of 35% carbon dioxide in panic disorder. METHOD: We randomly selected six panic disorder subjects, u...
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Thieme Revinter Publicações
1999-06-01
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| Series: | Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0004-282X1999000300003&tlng=en |
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| Summary: | AIMS: 1. To verify the sensibility of panic patients to a mixture of 35% CO2 and 65% O2. 2. To determine if a ten days treatment with clonazepam attenuates the panic attacks induced by the inhalation of 35% carbon dioxide in panic disorder. METHOD: We randomly selected six panic disorder subjects, using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. All subjects went double-blindly through an inhalation of 35% CO2 and compressed gas (atmospheric air) on two occasions. First, at baseline, when they were drug free. Second, after a 10 days clonazepam treatment. RESULTS: Neither at baseline nor after treatment any patient had a panic attack during compressed gas inhalation. At the first test five patients (83.3%) had a severe panic attack with high levels of subjective anxiety during carbon dioxide inhalation. After 9.6 (± 3.4) days of clonazepam treatment, only two (33.3%) patients experienced a mild panic attack. CONCLUSION: This pilot study suggests the efficacy of the short term clonazepam therapy in attenuating panic attacks and supports the usefulness of the 35% carbon dioxide challenge test as an analogue method for study the efficacy of anti-panic drugs. Further placebo-controlled studies to pharmacological treatment are warranted. |
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| ISSN: | 1678-4227 |