Keywords: Trauma | Translational Research | PTSD
Presentation Type: Symposium
Exposure to traumatic events is a common experience. Almost everybody experience PTSD-like symptoms after the event. For some individuals, however, the symptoms persist leading to a diagnosis of PTSD. Little progress has been made in identifying interventions that prevent trauma survivors from developing PTSD or ameliorate symptoms if already developed.
In daily life, stimuli acquire significance as threats by their association with harmful events, in other words, through Pavlovian conditioning. These conditioned threats elicit unconscious automatic reactions called conditioned responses, such as freezing behavior and increased heart rate among others. Auditory Pavlovian Threat Conditioning (PTC) in rats is widely used to study the neurobiology of emotional learning and memory. Moreover, alterations of these processes seem to account for the appearance of PTSD. In fact, drugs that prevent the consolidation or reconsolidation of threat memories are potential targets to respectively prevent or treat PTSD.
First line treatment of acute trauma involves the administration of an opioid and a benzodiazepine. But these drugs present problems such as addiction and increased prevalence of PTSD respectively. Other drugs with similar therapeutic profile like Pregabalin (PGB) and Gabapentin (GBP) might be a better option due to their lack of the said side effects. Here, using PTC in rats, we test whether these drugs have an effect in long-term memory after their systemic administration after conditioning and memory retrieval.
Rats treated with GBP or PGB after conditioning exhibit an impairment on long-term memory (GBP: t(29) = 2.539, p<0.01; PGB: t(29) = 2.776 p<0.001). When the drugs were given after the retrieval of memory only PGB induced a diminished memory of the Pavlovian association (GBP: t(27) = 0,259 n.s.; PGB: t(27) = 3.998 p<0.001).
These effects suggest a potential protective effect of these two drugs in the development of PTSD or other psychiatric conditioning triggered by the exposure to an acute traumatic experience. Interestingly, the effect observed after memory retrieval points at PGB as a conceivable drug candidate to treat PTSD after its diagnosis.
Research Assistant Professor
New York University
Sunday, November 19
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM
The asset you are trying to access is locked. Please enter your access key to unlock.