The Effect Of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation In Panic Disorder
Condition: Panic Disorder
MeSH terms: Panic Disorder
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of prefrontal transcranial Direct
      Current Stimulation (tDCS) on clinical severity, attentional bias and interoceptive accuracy
      in panic disorder (PD).

      The participants will be assigned to active and sham groups (1:1) and will receive 10
      sessions of tDCS. The study will also examine if the effects may last for a month.
    

Detailed description: 
      Panic Disorder (PD) is one of the most common anxiety disorders. In spite of several
      available medications, there are unsatisfactory outcomes in a considerable proportion of PD
      patients and novel treatment approaches are lacking. Given that response to
      pharmacotherapeutical and psychological treatments occur after long intervals and medications
      may cause substantial adverse effects which may affect treatment compliance, fast acting and
      well-tolerated treatments such as non-invasive brain stimulation are considered to be useful
      as primary treatment approach or as an add-on treatment in PD. Repetitive Transcranial
      Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) trials targeting prefrontal cortex mostly reported favorable
      outcomes in PD.

      Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) is another promising non-invasive brain
      stimulation method with numerous distinctive aspects including its low-cost, robust safety
      and tolerability, low dropout rates, easy application, reliable blinding procedures and the
      opportunity to use concomitantly with other treatments. Left anodal/right anodal tDCS over
      the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has been demonstrated to decrease attentional bias and
      amygdala reactivity to threat in individuals with high trait anxiety. Moreover, a
      treatment-resistant case of PD was reported to have significant amelioration of symptoms up
      to one month after 10 sessions of tDCS.

      The study is a triple-blind randomized controlled trial. The sample will be consisted of
      thirty participants diagnosed as having PD due to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
      Disorders (DSM-5) criteria. The participants will be assigned to active or sham groups
      equally. Clinical severity will be assessed with adequate scales. Emotion recognition,
      attentional bias to threat and interoceptive accuracy will also be measured. Then,
      participants will be applied ten active or sham sessions of left anodal/right cathodal tDCS
      over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). All measurements will be repeated after the
      applications. Succinctly, the aim of this study is to assess the effect of ten sessions left
      anodal/right cathodal tDCS over the DLPFC on clinical severity, attentional bias and
      interoceptive accuracy in PD.
    

Intervention name(s): Transcranial direct current stimulation
Intervention type(s): Device
Intervention description(s): Participants will receive a total of 10 stimulation sessions. During each session, 2 milliAmpers of active or sham tDCS will be applied for 20 minutes over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (left anodal/right anodal).
Other intervention name(s): tDCS; Direct current stimulation; transcranial electrical stimulation
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Triple (Participant, Investigator, Outcomes Assessor)
Primary purpose: Treatment
Keywords: Anxiety disorders; Panic disorder; Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation; Interoceptive accuracy; Attention bias; Emotion recognition; Brain Stimulation