[Recent progress in development of psychotropic drugs (1)--Anti-anxiety drugs]

Anti-anxiety drugs are widely used for patients with neurosis or psychosomatic diseases due to the stress of contemporary society. The high efficacy of benzodiazepine (BZD) or its analog, which contains diazepam, is well-known. While these compounds have strong anti-anxiety effects, it has recently been pointed out that they have some side effects when used as daytime tranquilizers and induce drug dependence. The cause of these side effects is thought to be that typical BZD is a full agonist of BZD receptors. For this reason, partial agonists, inverse agonists and antagonists of BZD receptors are being developed. Furthermore, some non-BZD anti-anxiety drugs are also being developed to avoid the side effects of BZD. One of these is a 5-HT1A agonist, which has a high affinity for 5-HT receptors, because it is reported that 5-HT is related to anxiety in the septum-hippocampus system. In addition, the anti-anxiety effect of 5-HT3 agonist is being investigated, while the anti-anxiety effect of cholecystokinin agonists is also attracting attention. Because these new anti-anxiety drugs are more potent and have fewer side effects than BZD, they may achieve widespread clinical use.