Using antibiotic to treat phobias?

[zakur]

Antibacterial eases phobia

A common antibacterial drug has helped phobics to overcome their fear of heights. Combined with standard behavioural therapy, D-cycloserine (DCS) speeded recovery fourfold compared with therapy alone.

[...]

Davis's team treated 30 acrophobics - people with a severe fear of heights. Wearing specially designed goggles hooked up to a PC, the subjects rode a virtual glass elevator. After two sessions, patients reported a 10% decrease in anxiety levels. When the sessions were supplemented with DCS, their anxiety dropped 50%.

After three months back in the real world, drug-treated patients had had twice as many high-rise encounters as their therapy-only counterparts. They were more likely to drive over high bridges and take elevator rides, says Davis. Two sessions of DCS and virtual reality are equivalent to eight sessions of therapy alone, he claims.

How accurately can people report their anxiety levels? That seems entirely subjective to me.

 

[The Don]

I guess this will have to go in the "hmmmm interesting" column for now.

30 people is not a big study group BUT, for a first investigation it's not unreasonable. The article doesn't describe the protocol in detail.

If the study is repeated and it's found that there is a link, I'd love to know what the mechanism is. Is there an "Anxiety" bug?

 

[BillyJoe]

Cycloserine is used to treat TB and TB like bacterial infections so
I thought perhaps its use in the treatment of acrophobia might be making use of a common side effect of the drug but look at the SIDE-EFFECTS OF CYCLOSERINE

Side effects.....convulsions, drowsiness, headache, tremor, dizziness, confusion and disorientation, hyperirritability and aggression......

Hmmmm.....wonder why they chose it to treat acrophobia???

BillyJoe