An Event Related Potentials Study And Atypical Antipsychotics Study In Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Research 1:Attention Function of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder:An Event-related Potentials StudyObjective:Event-related potentials (ERP) functional characteristics of attention of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients were investigated to explore whether they exist functional defects and attentional bias.Methods:22 PTSD patients and 21 normal controls watched positive, neutral and negative (violence) pictures, each picture had a border, and let them made key reaction to border color, simultaneous collected EEG data, analyzed behavioral data. Peak latencies and amplitudes of P2 was measured.Results:Behavioral results showed that reaction time is longer than normal in patients with PTSD compared to normal controls during the reaction to border color of three pictures. ERP results showed that the P2 average peak amplitudes was smaller in PTSD group when watched three emotional pictures, when viewed images of violence, the peak latencies is shorter than the normal controls.Conclusions:Compared to normal controls, PTSD patients have problems in attention functions.Research 2:Efficacy and acceptability of atypical antipsychotics for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder:A meta-analysis of randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trialsBackground:As some evidences demonstrated that atypical antipsychotics (AA) may be efficacious in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), we preformed a meta-analysis of randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials (RCTs) of AAs for the treatment of PTSD.Methods:251 articles were searched and screened in the Medline, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases. Eight RCTs met the inclusion criteria.Results:AAs may be superior to placebo in the treatment of PTSD, as indicated by the changes in Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) total scores which was the primary efficacy result. The dropout rate of acceptability index showed no difference between AAs and placebo.Conclusion:AAs may be superior to placebo on global PTSD symptoms and individual PTSD symptom cluster, especially in intrusion and hyperarousal syndrome.