Anxiety Study: Brain Stimulation May Ease Anxiety Disorder

Posted By : Rick Hughey on November 21st, 2008 | File Under Anxiety -

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According to French Scientists, the same type of deep brain inspiration used to treat some patients for Parkinson’s disease also provided assistance to few people suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Their study contained only 16 patients, but in four of them, symptoms nearly disappeared. However, many patients undergo from severe side effects, including one case of bleeding in the brain.

The treatment involved an experimental brain pacemaker, and it condensed repetitive thoughts and behaviors in some of the patients just as it blocks tremors for some Parkinson’s victims.

The researchers reach with the approach after discovering that two Parkinson’s patients who got the treatment also saw an improvement to their obsessive-compulsive disorders.

In the French study the researchers revealed that, symptoms were condensed more than 25 percent.

The results are “very encouraging,” stated by the study’s lead author, Dr. Luc Mallet of Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris. In an e-mail, he said the process should be used only in medical studies at the moment because of the possible side effects.

The findings are revealed in last week’s New England Journal of Medicine.

Around 2.2 million American adults have obsessive-compulsive disorder. It entails recurring, unwanted thoughts, such as a fear of germs, and people who have it engage in rituals like repeatedly washing their hands or checking on something again and again.

Standard treatment, antidepressants and psychotherapy, doesn’t work in everyone. The patients in the French study were complex cases who didn’t respond well to treatment.

All had surgery to have the pacemaker - similar to a heart pacemaker implanted in their chest and associated to electrodes inserted into their brains.