Pentagastrin test for anxiety – psychophysiology and personality

Abstract

We found correlations between psychophysiology, humoral response and subjective ratings following pentagastrin administration. CCK(B) receptor stimulation might reveal phenotype properties predictive of anxiety-related traits, measurable through serum levels of C-peptide. Furthermore, our results support the predictive value of ASI for fearfulness.

Emotional perception modulated by an opioid and a cholecystokinin agonist

“…3a). The drug also induced a higher discomfort in agreement to previous research (Bradwejn et al 1991;Radu et al 2002Radu et al , 2003Fig. 4a).…”

“…Earlier studies have used CCK agonists as an experimental model for anxiety and panic (Bradwejn et al 1991;Dauge and Lena 1998;de Leeuw et al 1996;Radu et al 2003) and focused on their effect on internal states. The CCK system may also change the processing of external noxious input in general (Fields and Basbaum 1999;Hebb et al 2005) and in the placebo/nocebo response (Benedetti 1996;Colloca and Benedetti 2005;Levine et al 1978;Petrovic et al 2002).…”

“…In addition, remifentanil reaches its peak blood concentration after approximately 60 s (Michelsen and Hug 1996) and has an approximate half time of 3 min (Beers and Camporesi 2004), i.e., there was a significant effect during the whole picture presentation. Previous studies with pentagastrin have shown a peak autonomic response after 50 s (Radu et al 2003). Importantly, the symptoms decline very quickly for pentagastrin and usually disappear after 4 min (Radu 2005).…”

“…We chose to use a dose of 0.1 μg/kg pentagastrin to induce reliable emotional responses but avoid inducing panic attacks (the lowest panicogenic dose of pentagastrin described to be psychotropic is 0.11 μg/kg (Abelson and Liberzon 1999), and a dose of 0.05 μg/kg can induce both a significant increase of autonomic responses and experienced discomfort (Radu et al 2003)). The same logic was applied for remifentanil treatment.…”

“…For example, administration of opioids induces a sensation of pleasantness (Berridge 2003;Koob et al 1989), contrary to CCK agonists that induce unpleasantness and anxiety (Bradwejn et al 1991;Radu et al 2002Radu et al , 2003. In higher doses, administration of a CCK agonist induces panic attacks (de Montigny 1989), and patients suffering from anxiety disorders seem to be more sensitive to CCK treatment (Bradwejn et al 1991(Bradwejn et al , 1992de Leeuw et al 1996), suggesting a regulatory role for the peptide in these disorders (Hebb et al 2005 ;Singh et al 1991).…”