"They’re not presenting the negatives of the data with adequate emphasis – it’s as simple as that," added Dr. Alexander McFarlane, director of the Centre for Military and Veterans’ Health and professor of psychiatry at the University of Adelaide (Australia). "You can see there’s a real desire to bring the world of psychotherapy and the world of pharmacology together. There’s tremendous investment in this idea. The trouble is, you always have inconvenient truths, and it’s about not running away from them. Good science is to face those inconsistencies."
But Dr. Pitman was more optimistic. "The goal of DCS is to facilitate the consolidation of extinction learning. It’s called extinction retention. We’ve published data that extinction retention is deficient in posttraumatic stress disorder, so the idea that extinction retention could be boosted by an agent like DCS is very attractive," he said.
The field is still very new, and gaps in knowledge are numerous, both at the basic science and clinical level, said Dr. Marmar, urging patience.
"The fact that DCS has been shown to accelerate or improve the effectiveness of behavioral treatments for other disorders, like phobia, social anxiety, and some others suggests we should continue to work on this drug with PTSD – and try to refine it and try to determine the optimal parameters in dosing and scheduling."
None of the presenters reported having conflicts of interest.