研究:治疗焦虑症的新药

焦虑症困扰着不少人。澳大利亚的研究人员最近发现了一种以天然激素为主要成分的新药，用以对有社交焦虑障碍的人进行治疗。目前的实验证明，这种药物还是很有效的。

These white rats may look like ordinary rats, but they're very happy. They're also part of an important scientific experiment.

Researchers at the University of Sydney Schools of Chemistry and Psychology have found a way of making them more sociable and outgoing.

They've developed a compound that mimics oxytocin, a feel-good hormone known to reduce social anxiety.

Associate Professor Michael Kassiou from the University of Sydney says the findings from the new compound are encouraging.

"It's early days in that research. We're still establishing that this drug is actually hitting the target that we think it's hitting in the brain, and there's a lot of work to do on that. But this is probably the most exciting drug discovery project I've ever been involved in, and I think there's real potential to help a lot of people who have social problems."

Kassiou says the rats' behavior changed, and they became markedly more interested in one another.

"Well, with the compound that we've developed recently, it's very interesting in that it has a dramatic effect on the social behavior of rats. So when we give this in the right dose to rats that are socially interacting, you get a dramatic increase in, I guess, their desire to hang out together. Rats given a placebo will show a certain level of social behavior. They're socially inquisitive, and they will spend time interacting, but they get bored with each other pretty rapidly and will retreat to opposite ends of the box or of the room. But on this drug they seem to find each other much more interesting and will hang out together for long periods."

Researchers have developed software to track the movements of the rats which have been given the hormone. The data determines the effectiveness of the treatment by measuring the level of social interaction.

While it's still a long way from happy rats to happy humans, researchers believe it's an important step forward.

Iain McGregor is a psychopharmacologist at Sydney University. He says the compound is already proving effective, even although the research is still in the early stages.

"These are just our preliminary studies, and it was quite effective in doing it—more so than oxytocin itself when administered—which tells us that our molecules are more effective in reaching their targets and having these effects. So, it is more effective but this is the beginning of our discovery in terms of our molecules, and we are looking at a better understanding of the chemical structure and what it is about these that have these effects that tried to develop something even more effective than what we currently have."

In Australia, the treatment will be trialed in humans over the next few years.

For CRI, I am Li Dong.