CCK-4: Psychophysiological conditioning elicits features of spontaneous panic attacks

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Cholecystokinin (CCK) in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The purpose of the study was to investigate CCK-4 effects on emotional facial expression and especially on fear relevant facial muscles establishing therewith a more objective method to measure subjective panic anxiety.

Why It Was Studied

Cholecystokinin-tetrapeptide (CCK-4) is an established model to generate subjective panic anxiety.

Effects other than upon subjective panic and stress hormone activity have barely been examined.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 20 subjects taking part.

The age groups tagged for this paper are young adults and adults, men only.

Subjects of each group were randomly assigned in two different balanced orders of investigations: CCK-CCK-Placebo vs.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled.

Because people in this Cholecystokinin (CCK) study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

As a double-blind Cholecystokinin (CCK) study, the assignments were hidden from both participants and investigators until the end.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Cholecystokinin (CCK) group a baseline to be compared against.

Facial muscle and hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA)-axis activity were recorded.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Adrenocorticotropic Hormone, Area Under Curve, Electromyography, Facial Muscles, Pain Measurement, Panic Disorder and Radioimmunoassay.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Cholecystokinin (CCK) in 20 subjects.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Its findings take up roughly 4 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2010 (Journal of psychiatric research), a journal based in England.

More context: the Cholecystokinin (CCK) compound page, all human trials.