The Short-Term Antianxiety Effects of Propranolol HCI

¹ Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of New Mexico.
² The Counseling Center, Washington County, Maine.
³ Department of Psychiatry, Moncrief Army Hospital, Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
⁴ Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M.

Twenty-eight anxious psychiatric outpatients participated in a two-week double-blind crossover study of propranolol HCl and placebo. The patients were instructed to increase the dose up to 160 mg daily. Twenty-two patients completed the study.

In the doses given, the short-term antianxiety effects of propranolol were not conspicuous. Out of 35 scores, only two favored propranolol at a significant level. However, there was a trend and a consistency of results which suggests that propranolol has short-term antianxiety effects. Propranolol might be of advantage in the treatment of patients in whom somatic symptoms due to beta-adrenergic receptor stimulation predominate.

Note:

Dr. Betty J. Eberle of the Department of Family and Community Medicine, School of Medicine, University of New Mexico, was statistical consultant. The drugs were supplied by Ayerst Laboratories, New York, N.Y.

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