Panic Disorder Gene Research News

Researchers at the Centre for Medical and Molecular Biology in Barcelona reported a genetic abnormality common to 90 percent of family members affected by panic disorder and social phobia. The abnormality, called the DUP25 mutation, was also present in most unrelated people suffering from these disorders but rare in people who were free from anxiety. The affected genes play a critical role in the way cells in the central nervous system interact with each other.
This discovery does not by any means rule out the influence of learning or experience; for example, 20 percent of subjects with the DUP25 mutation had no anxiety problems whatsoever. And about half of the people presenting for evaluation had no parental background for the disorder.

The researchers pointed out that a critical factor in the development of panic disorder is not the panic attack per se but the way the individual interprets it, e.g., as impending insanity, heart failure, fainting, and so forth. It was the hard won understanding of false interpretation that led behavioral researchers to develop talk therapies which are effective in 80 percent or more of cases.

Thus there are effective therapies for panic disorder which work despite genetic influence and which do not depend upon current drug therapies or medications to be developed in the future. Please visit our website for more information on the prevalence, nature, and treatment of anxiety.