Current psychiatric classification and diagnostic scales – Are they sensitive enough to detect the lasting effects of early childhood adversity?

Original Articles

Controlled cross-over study in normal subjects of naloxone-preceding-lactate infusions; respiratory and subjective responses: relationship to endogenous opioid system, suffocation false alarm theory and childhood parental loss

M. Preter, S. H. Lee, E. Petkova, M. Vannucci, S. Kim and D. F. Klein

Psychological Medicine, First View Articles article

doi:10.1017/S0033291710000838 (About doi), Published Online by Cambridge University Press 06 May 2010 

From the results: 

“Normal subjects, usually relatively insensitive to the TV effects of lactate infusion, in this study, given
opioid antagonist pretreatment, developed TV and RR increments resembling those occurring in both spon-
taneous clinical panic attacks and in panic patients who panic during lactate infusions (Gorman et al.
1984 ; Liebowitz et al. 1984 a ; Papp et al. 1993). The hypothesis that a functioning endogenous opioid sys-
tem buffers normal subjects from the behavioral and physiological effects of lactate is consonant with these
results.
To our knowledge, this is the first time that the prolonged physiological effects of actual separations
and losses during childhood (i.e. parental death, parental separation or divorce) on the endogenous opioid
system of healthy adults have been objectively shown in an experimental setting. The presence or absence
of CPL antecedents determined the response to the naloxone–lactate probe. A history of CPL decreased…” [read more].

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