[Evaluation study of clinical and neurobiological efficacy of EMDR in patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder]. / Studio di valutazione dell'efficacia clinica e neurobiologica dell'EMDR in pazienti affetti da disturbo da stress post-traumatico.

UNLABELLED: Strong evidences support use of EMDR in patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). AIM: To evaluate clinical and neurobiological-structural efficacy of EMDR on drug-naïve PTSD without comorbidity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We made clinical evaluation and hippocampal volume measurement by MRI on 29 subjects suffering from PTSD and on 30 healthy control-subjects. Then, patients were treated with EMDR and after three months of psychotherapy the clinical evaluation and the MRI exam were replied. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Our results demonstrated that the diagnosis of PTSD was no more possible on all the patients who terminated the psychotherapy (n=18). At the same time, all the patients showed an average increase of 6% in hippocampal volumes. CONCLUSIONS: Our reaserach suggests that EMDR treatment correlates not only with a significant improvement of symptoms of PTSD, but also with a significant increase of hippocampal volumes.