PTSD is a condition which affects those who experience a catastrophe, or those who witness it, and can even occur among friends or family members of those who went through the actual trauma.
Scientists from Bangalore-based National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) have found a treatment for the debilitating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), opening the avenue for therapeutic strategies to be developed to effectively manage the condition.
PTSD is a condition which affects those who experience a catastrophe, or those who witness it, and can even occur among friends or family members of those who went through the actual trauma. The condition involves upsetting memories of the event, nightmares, and feeling of intense physical reactions to reminders of the event that leads to pounding of the heart, rapid breathing, nausea, muscle tension and sweating, and can throw life out of gear for the affected persons. With accidents and catastrophes, natural or man-made, affecting people regularly, PTSD has become common condition, increasingly seen among combat veterans and soldiers who have experienced bloody wars.
Hitherto, it was globally believed that high levels of stress hormones (like glucocorticoids, which includes cortisol, secreted by the adrenal glands) was linked to stress-related disorders, giving rise to the hypothesis that high levels of cortisol on a long-term basis may impair the psychological capacity to cope with stress.
NCBS scientists said that due to this drugs that block glucocorticoid activity, called glucocorticoid receptor antagonists, were tested as treatments for depression.
However, research conducted by the NCBS scientists — Sumantra Chattarji, Rajnish P Rao and Shobha Anil Kumar — in collaboration with Bruce S McEwen, head of the Harold and Margaret Milliken Hatch Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology at Rockefeller University, has confirmed otherwise.
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