The Food and Drug Administration indication of alprazolam for the treatment of panic disorder tacitly suggests that it does not induce panic attacks. This suggestion is amplified by the history of alprazolam as the first medication approved for panic disorder. Moreover, alprazolam acutely decreases anxiety symptoms, including panic, and is widely used for this indication. Although dependence, w...

In a sample of 94 panic patients, 43 patients (45.7%) had comorbid depression. In majority of patients, the comorbid depression was severe enough to be diagnosed as major depression. Panic patients with depression were more severely functionally impaired and had more generalized anxiety symptoms as compared to pure panic patients. There were no significant differences between panic patients wit...

BACKGROUND The primary aim of the present study was to compare temperament and character traits and levels of alexithymia between patients with panic disorder and healthy controls. METHODS Sixty patients with panic disorder admitted to the psychiatry clinic at Fırat University Hospital were enrolled in the study, along with 62 healthy age-matched and sex-matched controls. The Structured Clini...

BACKGROUND The sympathetic nervous system has long been believed to be involved in the pathogenesis of panic disorder, but studies to date, most using peripheral venous catecholamine measurements, have yielded conflicting and equivocal results. We tested sympathetic nervous function in patients with panic disorder by using more sensitive methods. METHODS Sympathetic nervous and adrenal medull...

It has been known for many years that acute attacks of anxiety can occur in the course of anxiety and depressive disorders. For example, in 1879 Maudsley described anxiety attacks in severe depressive disorders (Maudsley, 1879, p. 365) and in 1893 Hecker pointed out their association with the less severe forms of depression and anxiety known as neurasthenia. Hecker also described anxiety attack...

OBJECTIVE Panic disorder has been suggested to be divided into the respiratory and non-respiratory subtypes in terms of its clinical presentations. The present study aimed to investigate whether there are any differences in treatment response and clinical characteristics between the respiratory and non-respiratory subtypes of panic disorder patients. METHODS Among the 48 patients those who co...

OBJECTIVE Serotonergic dysfunction is quite evident in panic disorder. We investigated whether the C(-1019)G polymorphism of 5-HT1A receptor gene may play a role in the pathogenesis of panic disorder in a Korean population. METHODS The 5-HT1A receptor genotype for the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) C(-1019)G was analyzed in 94 patients and 111 healthy controls. The severity of the patie...

BACKGROUND Sighs, breaths with larger tidal volumes than surrounding breaths, have been reported as being more frequent in patients with anxiety disorders. METHODS Sixteen patients with panic disorder, 15 with generalized anxiety disorder, and 19 normal control subjects were asked to sit quietly for 30 min. Respiratory volumes and timing were recorded with inductive plethysmography and expire...

PURPOSE Previous studies of the association between hypertension and panic disorder were uncontrolled or involved small numbers of patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS We compared the prevalence of panic disorder and panic attacks in 351 patients with documented hypertension who were randomly selected from all hypertensive patients registered in one primary care practice with age- and gender-matche...

Two recent studies have found that small samples of panic disorder patients appear to have elevated levels of alexithymia and raised the possibility that panic patients may constrict emotional experience. An alternate hypothesis is that there is conceptual and measurement overlap between alexithymia and cognitive aspects of panic disorder, and panic patients may in fact score high on only one d...