Psychiatrists at the University of Chicago have found that memantine, used to treat symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, helps fight mental disorders associated with hair pulling and skin scratching. research by scientists, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
There are two types of obsessive-compulsive disorders: dermatillomania and trichotillomania. Both diseases occur against the background of stress or in people with an unstable psyche. The first manifests itself in the form of an uncontrolled effect on the skin: scratching wounds, removing inflammation, combing skin irregularities, peeling wounds and burrs, biting lips. The second is to pull out the hairline on the head or other parts of the body.
According to the authors of the work, it is difficult to find psychotherapists who specialize in these diseases, so it is important to seek new treatment methods. Researchers decided to test memantine, which is intended to treat memory loss and thought disorders in people with Alzheimer’s disease. The drug is well tolerated by patients and has few serious side effects.
The study involved 100 people with the disease, half of whom took memantine and the second a placebo for two months. The scientists evaluated the patients’ condition every two weeks. As it turned out, memantine was associated with significant improvements over placebo in patients with these diseases. Thus, symptoms were alleviated in 26 people and completely resolved in six, compared with three and one patients, respectively, from the placebo group.
“Moreover, the drug turned out to be even more effective than psychotherapy. We plan to find out how effective memantine is in combination with therapy in the future,” the authors said.