Treatment of Pediatric Post-traumatic Stress Disorder With Memory Reactivation Under the Influence of Propranolol

By age 18, roughly 8% of traumatized youth have met criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD, with numbers rising up to 40% in cases of sexual abuse and assault. To date there is no empirical support for the use of psychopharmacological interventions as treatment of pediatric PTSD. Trauma-focused psychotherapeutic/TFP approaches should be favored in childhood PTSD. However, when compared to active control conditions, TFP produced a mean effect size on child and adolescents population (g=0.83). Moreover, in therapies with a substantial exposure component, the intense and lengthy reexperiencing of the traumatic event results in a substantial proportion of participants dropping out. The reactivation of a previously consolidated memory can make it labile, subsequently requiring a re-stabilization of it called reconsolidation of the memory. Acting on these reconsolidation processes makes possible to interfere with the subsequent storage of this memory. The combination of the targeted reactivation of the traumatic memory and the intake of an agent that decreases the reconsolidation can thus disrupt the recall of unwanted memories and thus serve as a treatment for people suffering from traumatic memories, such as in PTSD. Since stimulation of β-noradrenergic receptors facilitates the consolidation of memories as well as their re-consolidation, an antagonist of these receptors, propranolol, has generated considerable interest as a treatment to alleviate emotional and traumatic memories in individuals with PTSD. In adults diagnosed with long-standing PTSD two 6-week, double-blind, placebocontrolled, randomised clinical trials, one in 60 subjects and the other in 67 have shown promising results. PTSD participants who actively recalled their traumatic event under the influence of propranolol once a week for up to 6 weeks showed a substantial decrease in symptom ratings compared with placebo. Thus, all of this data led the team to propose a comparable design study in children with PTSD