Quality of life in early phases of panic disorder: Predictive factors

Gender-Specific Association between the COMT Val158Met Polymorphism and Openness to Experience in Panic Disorder Patients

“…The personality traits of both openness to experience and extraversion are associated with dopamine function [37]. In panic disorder, low extraversion is related to agoraphobia [38,39], and openness to experience has been reported to correlate with extraversion [40]. In the present study, the rate of comorbid agoraphobia was not associated with COMT polymorphism or gender differences.…”

Quality of life assessment by WHOQOL-BREF in panic disorder patients during treatment

“…Although, a recent study reported that PD patients in early phases of the illness have poorer quality of life than healthy controls independently of co-morbid agoraphobia. PD patients with agoraphobia had lower quality of life scores at mental health domain, but not in physical domain, demonstrating that agoraphobia is important to poor mental health but not physical functioning 28 . Quality of life among PD patients is at the same level as somatic diseases 9,11 .…”

A comparative evaluation of panicogenic processes and quality of life in a sample of non-clinical panickers and age and sex matched non-panicking controls

“…Accordingly, we tested the hypotheses that elevated levels of each of these factors would be related to greater severity of panic, greater avoidance behavior, and decreased quality of life. Recent research has shown that non-specific factors (in addition to panic symptoms), particularly depressive and anxiety symptoms, significantly contribute to worse quality of life in patients with panic disorder (Carrera et al, 2006). However, there remains a paucity of research that has directly evaluated quality of life among non-clinical panickers.…”