The role of memantine in anxiety disorders: an evidence-based review

Categoría Revisión sistemática
RevistaJ. bras. psiquiatr
Año 2016
ABSTRACT Objective Review the evidence on the efficacy of memantine in the treatment of the anxiety disorders. Methods A systematic review of articles published in the last ten years, in Portuguese, English and Spanish, was performed in Medline, other places of Evidence Medicine and Index of Portuguese Databases, using the following MESH terms: memantine, treatment and anxiety disorders. We used the Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy (SORT) scale of American Family Physician to assign levels of evidence and strength of recommendations. Results A total of 131 papers were identified, and after the application of inclusion criteria, 6 papers remained, including two randomized controlled trials (RCT), one clinical guideline (CG), two open clinical trials and one systematic review (SR). The CG does not recommend the use of memantine in the treatment of the generalized anxiety disorder (SORT C) but does recommend the use of memantine as second-line adjunctive therapy for obsessive compulsive disorder and as third-line therapy for post-traumatic stress (SORT C). The two RCT suggest that an add-on of memantine does improve the symptoms of patients suffering from severe obsessive compulsive disorder. The SR showed that the use of memantine had some benefit in relieving obsessive compulsive disorder symptoms. The two other studies showed memantine may be an effective augmentation therapy in patients with anxiety who remain symptomatic despite adequate treatment with conventional antidepressant anxiolytics. Conclusion The current available evidence suggests the benefit of memantine as an adjunctive therapy for the treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder (SORT B). Most studies does not show the benefit of the use of memantine for the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder (SORT C).
Epistemonikos ID: b4eb877c142f595dedbeecc872c296f998f26d7b
First added on: Apr 27, 2019