Role of Autacoids in the Development of Vulnerability and Resilience in Patients with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

There are three monoamines in the family, including dopamine (DA), norepinephrine (NE) and serotonin (5HT). First two monoamines are catecholamines and serotonin is an indolamine. Role of DA inPTSD is not very clear even though there is evidence that exposure to stressinduces mesolimbic dopamine release that may play a major role in the modulation of HPA axis and often may result some of the psychosis and paranoid behavior associated with some PTSD patients. NE is one of the principal mediators.

Catecholamine neurons centrally seem to play a very important role in enhancing the levels of vigilance, alertness, selective attention, fear conditioning and cardiovascular stimuli as described elsewhere. This evidence of catecholamine dysregulation increases the vulnerability to PTSD through the mechanisms of increased heart rate and blood pressure when an individual is exposed to visual or auditory trauma. Preventing pre-synaptic NE release with alpha 2 adrenergic agonists (clonidine) or opioids, or blocking post-synaptic norepinephrine with beta adrenergic blockers (propranolol) may diminish the fear conditioning.(Read more)