[Neuroendocrine effects of benzodiazepines]

Some clinical studies are available showing that benzodiazepine drugs are essentially devoid of major neuroendocrine effects, at least at anxiolytic doses. Moreover, sedative doses are necessary to evidence in laboratory animals an increased secretion of corticosteroids, a reduced activation of the adrenocortical axis by stress and an inhibition of prolactin secretion. In fact, the neuroendocrinology of anxiety and the neuroendocrine effects of benzodiazepines in the anxious subject are hardly known.