anxiety
Anxiety is defined as an exaggerated response to a natural fear, or an excessive fear of a normal situation. A variety of disorders are grouped under anxiety, including panic disorder, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder (“GAD”). Anxiety also commonly accompanies other psychiatric conditions such as depression, schizophrenia and addiction.
Including all its various forms, anxiety is a very common disorder. The prevalence is currently estimated at approximately 20% of the population worldwide. Anxiety is an important co-morbid condition of other psychiatric disorders and, in the case of depression, anxiety may form an integral part of the condition. The estimated market size for treating anxiety alone was approximately $4.5 billion in 2006. The size of the antidepressant market in 2006 was estimated to be $15 billion, of which about 20% of patients require concomitant anxiolytic therapy.
Marketed treatments have important limitations. Benzodiazepines, like Valium diazepam, are associated with drowsiness, tolerance and dependence, among other side effects. SSRIs, like Prozac fluoxetine take weeks to start working and can be associated with sexual dysfunction and important cardiovascular side effects. There remains a substantial unmet need for anti-anxiety drugs with a rapid onset of action and which do not have the side effects of currently available treatments.
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