Mining Clinical Data for Novel Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Medications

Area of Science:

• Pharmacology
• Psychiatry
• Data Science

Background:

• Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is prevalent and impactful, yet effective treatments are limited.
• Current U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved medications for PTSD have insufficient efficacy.
• There is a critical need for novel therapeutic strategies for PTSD.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify existing medications that could be repurposed for treating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
• To leverage large-scale electronic health record data for drug repurposing in PTSD.
• To uncover novel classes of medications potentially improving PTSD symptoms.

Main Methods:

• Constructed a mechanistic tree of all Food and Drug Administration-approved medications.
• Employed a tree-based scan statistic on electronic health record data from U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
• Analyzed PTSD symptom data (PTSD Checklist) from 168,941 patients over 20 years.

Main Results:

• Standard PTSD medications showed small improvements.
• Several direct-acting antivirals for hepatitis C virus demonstrated a strong association with PTSD symptom improvement.
• Findings remained robust after excluding patients receiving concurrent established PTSD treatments.

Conclusions:

• The study identified a novel class of medications, direct-acting antivirals, as potentially effective for PTSD symptom improvement.
• This exploratory approach aligns with existing PTSD pharmacotherapy knowledge.
• The findings suggest a promising avenue for drug repurposing in PTSD treatment.