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News Prazosin failed rigorous testing

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anthony

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I found this quite interesting. The VA did their own testing on Prazosin in order to determine whether it was usefull in treating sleep issues with PTSD, or not. Their results determined it was no better than placebo treatments.

A Drug Widely Used to Treat PTSD Symptoms Has Failed a Rigorous Trial

Nobody is saying its useless... as it works on some. But the prior evidence does not seem to stack up with the more rigorous numbers used by the VA in their own study.

I think this is more evidence that people should do their own testing when prescribed such treatments... even conduct blind testing on themselves with placebo pills (ie. have someone give you your pills so you don't know what you're taking to determine whether or not they work, or you convince yourself they work based on taking a pill.)
 
How interesting.

As a scientist i feel like it's a good idea to bring up the fact that sometimes one study isn't enough to prove something. But a disprove is important and always needs more research. The study does look rigorous. I'm weirdly excited to see where this goes

Also, I personally found Prazosin to be helpful! Maybe part of it is a placebo effect -- not necessarily a bad thing if it activates the right parts of the brain -- but the more vivid dreams were nice. Though, I can't say I've never had nightmare on it.

So glad you posted this! :)
 
I'm curious to know did they test if it helped nightmares or just sleep in general?
Cause I take it solely for the nightmares, and those have gotten loads better. My quality of sleep is still rough. But I don't have waking nightmares, night terrors, or nightmares that leave me gasping anymore.

I'd like to see a study that focuses just on the nightmares, not overall sleep quality. The drug was a happenstance (similarly to Vistaril) developed for a totally different reason, but had another effect that was helpful. I still say people should try it for nightmares if their doctors say it's okay. I've tried everything for sleep almost, and prazosin made the most difference in the nightmares.
 
I'm curious to know did they test if it helped nightmares or just sleep in general?

Both.

If you click through the links it takes you to the Abstract via New England Journal of Medicine
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1507598

Or the complete study
https://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00532493


CONCLUSIONS
In this trial involving military veterans who had chronic PTSD, prazosin did not alleviate distressing dreams or improve sleep quality. (Funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program; PACT ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00532493.)
 
It “helped” with sleep.....if by “helping” you mean it made it so I was almost passing out. (From what I gather, it’s not just about watching blood pressure, but your resting heart rate too? My doc didn’t take this into consideration with me.)

It didn’t make my nightmares better really. But oddly enough I have started dreaming again. I think my other meds are actually making this possible as I haven’t dreamed in many years.
 
My biggest problem with it was what it did to my resting heart rate. I plummeted down to 42 beat per minute from 54. I didn't need a worse problem with bradycardia.
 
I was on it for the first several years of PTSD and it helped with nightmares in that I had fleeting images upon waking that I'd been having a nightmare but they would fade away as consciousness took over and not haunt me. At that time I was still on Remeron which helped me get to sleep really well, though nothing's helped me stay asleep. I never looked at Prazosin as something to help me sleep, just something to help me from being haunted by my nightmares the next day/days. After some years, Prazosin wasn't working as well.

I've now been taking clonidine for more years and that does the same as Prasozin. It's also a blood pressure med. And I typically have low blood pressure, like 110 over 70, and it still works for me. Problem is, I wake up numerous times in a night, and it only works until I wake up. When I get back to sleep it doesn't work unless I take another one before getting back to sleep. And on rare nights when I take two (after waking up more than once), I am so worn out the next day (from the even lower blood pressure, I imagine), I only do that when I am really, really fed up with the nightmares and would rather or could spend the next day lounging around like a half-zombie.

My resting heart rate, tends to be higher, like between 60-80. So maybe that makes a difference.
 
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