RESEARCH ARTICLE
Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) to Treat Social Anxiety Disorder: Case Reports and a Review of the Literature
Flávia Paes1, 2, Tathiana Baczynski1, Felipe Novaes1, Tamires Marinho1, Oscar Arias-Carrión3, Henning Budde4, Alexander T. Sack5, Joseph P. Huston7, Leonardo Ferreira Almada8, Mauro Carta9, Adriana Cardoso Silva1, 2, Antonio E. Nardi1, 2, Sergio Machado1, 2, 6, 8, *
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2013Volume: 9
First Page: 180
Last Page: 188
Publisher ID: CPEMH-9-180
DOI: 10.2174/1745017901309010180
Article History:
Received Date: 13/4/2013Revision Received Date: 26/8/2013
Acceptance Date: 26/8/2013
Electronic publication date: 31/10/2013
Collection year: 2013
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Objectives: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common and debilitating anxiety disorders. However, few studies had been dedicated to the neurobiology underlying SAD until the last decade. Rates of non-responders to standard methods of treatment remain unsatisfactorily high of approximately 25%, including SAD. Advances in our understanding of SAD could lead to new treatment strategies. A potential non invasive therapeutic option is repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Thus, we reported two cases of SAD treated with rTMS Methods: The bibliographical search used Pubmed/Medline, ISI Web of Knowledge and Scielo databases. The terms chosen for the search were: anxiety disorders, neuroimaging, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation. Results: In most of the studies conducted on anxiety disorders, except SAD, the right prefrontal cortex (PFC), more specifically dorsolateral PFC was stimulated, with marked results when applying high-rTMS compared with studies stimulating the opposite side. However, according to the “valence hypothesis”, anxiety disorders might be characterized by an interhemispheric imbalance associated with increased right-hemispheric activity. With regard to the two cases treated with rTMS, we found a decrease in BDI, BAI and LSAS scores from baseline to follow-up. Conclusion: We hypothesize that the application of low-rTMS over the right medial PFC (mPFC; the main structure involved in SAD circuitry) combined with high-rTMS over the left mPFC, for at least 4 weeks on consecutive weekdays, may induce a balance in brain activity, opening an attractive therapeutic option for the treatment of SAD.
