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Hydrocortisone (30mg), an anti-inflammatory drug often used to treat arthritis, could enable those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to forget painful memories.
The study’s authors, which were published in the journal Translational Psychiatry, hope their findings can be used by clinical researchers to design more targeted treatments for men and women with PTSD.
Men and women responded differently depending on levels of sex hormones
In a study of 120 healthy participants, the drug was shown to help participants forget scenes from upsetting videos more quickly than those who were given the placebo.
The researchers think the drug may therefore be able to accelerate the process of forgetting intrusive memories when administered immediately after a traumatic event.
Men and women were found to respond differently to the drug depending on the levels of sex hormones in their system.
While men who had high levels of oestrogen seemed to have the fewest upsetting memories for a week after watching the video, women showed the opposite effect, and high levels of oestrogen seemed to make them more susceptible to involuntary bad memories.
In light of this, there is hope that researchers could develop targeted treatments using the individual hormone profiles of people with PTSD.
The drug could be harmful to some people with post-traumatic stress disorder
Lead author, PhD candidate Vanessa Hennessy (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences), said: “Persistent distressing, involuntary or ‘intrusive’ memories are a core feature of PTSD. Unlike other psychological disorders, the onset of PTSD caused by a single trauma can reliably be traced back to the occurrence of a specific, often life-threatening event that generates long-lasting intrusive memories.
“The findings reported here build on previous studies that target the emotions that underlie involuntary memory, with the aim of reducing how often they happen and how vivid they are – whilst still leaving the ability to recall the memory voluntarily.
“Our work shows how important it is to do careful experiments with healthy people to work out whether and how a drug like hydrocortisone could work. After all, our results seem to show that there might be conditions that make the drug harmful in some people.”