Am J Psychiatry 1988; 145:733-736
Copyright © 1988 by American Psychiatric Association
Epinephrine infusions in patients with social phobia
LA Papp, JM Gorman, MR Liebowitz, AJ Fyer, B Cohen and DF Klein
Biological Studies Unit, New York State Psychiatric Institute, NY 10032.
To assess the role of peripheral epinephrine in social anxiety, the authors
infused 11 patients meeting DSM-III criteria for social phobia with
intravenous epinephrine over 60 minutes. Although the mean plasma
epinephrine level increased from 113 to 928 pg/ml, only one of the 11
patients experienced observable anxiety; this finding suggests that an
increase in plasma epinephrine level alone is inadequate to cause social
anxiety. Of the variables measured, only the average minute volume
correlated with self-rated anxiety. Ventilatory indexes might be better
correlates of subjective anxiety than other physiological variables.
