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Yet all this new knowledge has not led to a PTSD pill; unlike the other anxiety disorders, PTSD remains a hard problem to solve. Many medications relieve certain symptoms, such as insomnia, without remedying the underlying disorder. But scientists hope that current research--for example, studies indicating that PTSD patients' memories of disturbing images can be blunted by drugs that block one type of norepinephrine receptor--will produce a generation of medications to treat PTSD.
Is it possible that such studies will come up with a drug that could inoculate soldiers against war shock before they go into battle, or mute the horrifying images within hours, days or weeks? "The logistics would be difficult, but it could be done," says psychiatrist Dr. J. Douglas Bremner of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in West Haven, Connecticut. "Soldiers suffering from acute-stress reactions on the battlefield are often treated with Valium and other drugs. We now think that acute-stress reaction is the prelude to PTSD. It would be nice to avert PTSD by interrupting the memory-consolidation process before those traumatic memories become pathological."
More secrets of the brain are emerging every day. There is evidence, for instance, that long-term use of antidepressants changes the intracellular environment permanently, even turning certain genes on or off. And new molecular techniques have revealed that individual receptors come in various genetic forms, or polymorphisms. This kind of knowledge opens the gateway to a whole panoply of fresh possibilities. The brain is a vast continent, and scientists have barely landed on its shores.
--With reporting by Hannah Bloch/Washington and Lisa H. Towle/Raleigh