[why am I filled with foreboding?]

Researchers discover new way to reduce anxiety, stress

December 17th, 2010 in Medicine & Health / Neuroscience

Two North American researchers have made a major discovery that will benefit
people who have anxiety disorders. Bill Colmers, a professor of pharmacology and
researcher in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta,
collaborated with Janice Urban, an associate professor in the department of
physiology and biophysics at the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin
University of Medicine and Science. The duo, who have been researching anxiety for
five years, discovered that blocking a process in nerve cells reduces anxiety, meaning
a new drug could now be developed to better treat anxiety disorders. Their findings
were published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Neuroscience in December’s edition.

Colmers explained that current anxiety drugs on the market are non-selective, which
means they inhibit various neurons, or nerve cells, in the brain—including ones you
don’t want to inhibit. Because no one could pinpoint how to reduce anxiety, all kinds
of neurons had to be treated with anxiety medication, which can have undesirable
side-effects such as drowsiness.

But now drugs can now be designed to more specifically treat anxiety disorders, likely
meaning fewer undesirable side effects and a better quality of life for those with
anxiety. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental-health issue in the country,
affecting one in 10 Canadian adults, according to the Anxiety Disorders Association of
Canada.

For years, researchers have understood what processes in the brain are responsible
for high and low anxiety levels, but no one had been able to identify what triggers
this process.

“No one else has discovered this,” said Colmers, a senior scientist with funding from
the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research (a provincial agency now called
Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions). “Others have identified the behaviour, but now
we know why this process happens and how it works. Now we know why certain
chemical messengers behave the way they do.”

There are two chemical messengers in a specific part of the brain known to regulate
anxiety. One messenger, known as neuropeptide Y, makes one less anxious while the
other, known as corticotropin-releasing factor or CRF, makes one more anxious.

These two chemical messengers regulate how “excitable” the nerve cell gets.
Neuropeptide Y causes nerve cells to be less active, meaning the cells will fire less.
The other chemical messenger, CRF, causes cells to be more active and fire more
often. The more often these neurons fire, the more anxious a person becomes.

By working with laboratory models, Colmers and Urban discovered that blocking the
process responsible for regulating cell excitability triggers less anxiety. Blocking this
process had the same effect as the chemical messenger neuropeptide Y, which
makes people less anxious.

Colmers said it could be 10 years before patients could start taking a new drug for
anxiety based on these research findings, but the find is still significant.

“There is a real need to find better treatments for anxiety—to better target the
processes in the brain that trigger anxiety disorders.”

Provided by University of Alberta

"Researchers discover new way to reduce anxiety, stress." December 17th, 2010.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-12-anxiety-stress.html

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