NEW ANXIOLYTICS IN DEVELOPMENT

Benzodiazepines (BDZ), the most popular drug of choice for treating an xiety disorders, pressure side-effects such as sedation, muscular diso rders, abuse liability and synergistic effect with alcohol and CNS dep ressant drugs. At present, pharmacological research is focusing to fin d anxiolytic drugs as efficacious as benzodiazepines but without side- effects. This review reports the status of the pharmaceutical research and development on novel drugs for the treatment of anxiety disorders . A close analysis of the items selected by the N5C ''Pharmaprojects'' search (anxiolytic class) yielded the following classification: A) Dr ugs interacting with the GABA-A receptor complex, which includes BDZ-l ike drugs, partial BDZ agonists (beta-carbolines) and drugs interactin g with the GABA-A complex through an as yet unidentified mechanism (15 compounds), B) Drugs acting as CCK-B antagonists (5 compounds), C) Dr ugs interacting with serotonergic function (30 compounds) subdivided i nto: (i) agonists at the 5-HT1A receptor, (ii) antagonists at the 5-HT 2 receptor, and (iii) antagonists at the 5-HT3 receptor: D) Drugs with other mechanisms (22 compounds). Based on these results, it is not po ssible to identify a common mechanism through which the selected drugs under development exert their anxiolytic effect. Therefore, it appear s that different biological mechanisms are specifically involved in th e different anxiety disorders.