Abstract
Diseases with pathological anxiety belong to the most prevalent behavioral disorders. Benzodiazepines were the first line treatment of anxiety since the sixties of the last century, later supplemented by tricyclic antidepressants and since eighties gradually replaced by selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI).
SSRIs are effective in the treatment of nearly all types of anxiety after chronic administration in humans. Thus, anxiety tests should be sensitive mainly to the chronic administration of SSRIs to fulfill the basic condition of construct and predictive validity.
However, the number of anxiety tests implies that there is no universal model, which meets the criteria of satisfactory validity and sensitivity. Anxiety models are mainly sensitive to the acute effects of drugs, which binds to GABA-A receptor (benzodiazepines, ethanol, neurosteroides, barbiturates etc.).
Only a few anxiety models are sensitive to the chronic administration of SSRIs. This review summarizes behavioral models of anxiety in animals and their sensitivity to different drugs, which are used in the treatment of anxiety diseases.