Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0036341 (schizophrenia)
 60,220 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The immune system is proposed as the key to understanding the etiology and treatment of psychosocial disease. There is a dense communication network between the immune system and the central nervous system (CNS). Immune cell cytokines, via direct action on the CNS, induce fever, alter sleep, pain perception and pituitary hormone release and reduce appetite and activity in animals. Interleukin-2 and interferon given to humans result in global behavioral and cognitive pathology. Activation of the immune system by pathogens produces global cognitive and behavioral pathology also. Recently, controlled trials have demonstrated that diet can cause psychosocial disease, presumably by an immune mechanism. Immune system abnormalities have been identified in manic-depressive psychosis, schizophrenia and alcoholism. Lithium carbonate is not only prophylactic for all three of these diseases, but it also powerfully stimulates the immune system. This is proposed as the mechanism of lithium's therapeutic effect. The antipsychotics, haloperidol and the phenothiazines, affect the immune system also. The rapid development of AIDS dementia complex can be explained by the remarkable influence the immune system has on the CNS.
 ...
PMID:The immune system is a key factor in the etiology of psychosocial disease. 205 27

A review of the literature on HIV and psychiatry thus far has revealed 13 cases of HIV infection presenting as psychosis. We argue that these cases could in fact represent either coincidental schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and HIV infection or HIV-related organic hallucinosis, delusional or affective syndromes with or without associated dementia (AIDS-dementia complex). The use of the term psychosis in describing AIDS-related behavioral syndromes is misleading, and should be replaced when possible by specific DSM-III-R categories.
 ...
PMID:HIV infection presenting as psychosis: a critique. 323 47

Lilliputian hallucinations have been described in patients with delirium, schizophrenia, seizure disorders, visual disturbances, and brain tumors. The authors report two cases of patients with lilliputian hallucinations, one with AIDS-dementia complex and the other with dementia following head trauma. This is the first time that lilliputian hallucinations have been described in association with such medical conditions.
 ...
PMID:Lilliputian hallucinations and medical illness. 803 94

Inbred MRL, NZB and BXSB strains of mice spontaneously develop a systemic, lupus-like autoimmune disease. The progress of autoimmunity is accompanied with a cascade of behavioral changes, most consistently observed in tasks reflective of emotional reactivity and the two-way avoidance learning task. Given the possibility that behavioral alterations may reflect a detrimental consequence of autoimmune-inflammatory processes and/or an adaptive response to chronic malaise, they are tentatively labeled as autoimmunity-associated behavioral syndrome (AABS). It is hypothesized that neuroactive immune factors (pro-inflammatory cytokines, brain-reactive antibodies) together with endocrine mediators (corticotropin-releasing factor, glucocorticoids) participate in the etiology of AABS. Since AABS develops natively, and has a considerable face and predictive validity, and since the principal pathway to autoimmunity is known, AABS may be a useful model for the study of CNS involvement in human autoimmune diseases and by extension, for testing autoimmune hypotheses of several mental disorders (major depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, autism and AIDS-related dementia).
 ...
PMID:Neurobehavioral alterations in autoimmune mice. 916 68

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Social Security Administration must award disability insurance benefits to an HIV-positive claimant who showed signs of AIDS-related dementia and schizophrenia. The court ruled that [name removed] had medical conditions that significantly limited his ability to work in any capacity, as opposed to an earlier ruling by a Social Security administrative law judge that found otherwise. [Name removed]'s HIV encephalopathy was serious enough to warrant an award of benefits, and the diarrhea associated with his diagnosis interfered with his work performance.
 ...
PMID:Court overturns denial of benefits based on HIV encephalopathy. 1136 38

Nitric oxide (NO), a molecular messenger synthesized by nitric oxide synthase (NOS) from L-arginine and molecular oxygen, is involved in a number of physiological and pathological processes in mammalians. Three structurally distinct isoforms of NOS have been identified: neuronal (nNOS), endothelial (eNOS) and inducible (iNOS). Although NO mediates several physiological functions, overproduction of NO by nNOS has been reported in a number of clinical disorders including acute (stroke) and chronic (schizophrenia, Alzheimer s, Parkinson s and AIDS dementia) neurodegenerative diseases, convulsions and pain; overproduction of NO by iNOS has been implicated in various pathological processes including septic shock, tissue damage following inflammation and rheumatoid arthritis. On the contrary, NO produced by eNOS has only physiological roles such as maintaining physiological vascular tone. Accordingly, selective inhibition of nNOS or iNOS vs eNOS may provide a novel therapeutic approach to various diseases; in addition selective inhibitors may represent useful tools for investigating other biological functions of NO. For these reasons, after the identification of N-methyl-L-arginine (L-NMA) as the first inhibitor of NO biosynthesis, design of selective NOS inhibitors has received much attention. In this article the recent developments of new molecules endowed with inhibitory properties against the various isoforms of NOS are reviewed. Major focus is placed on structure-activity-selectivity relationships especially concerning compounds belonging to the non-amino acid-based inhibitors.
 ...
PMID:Progress in the development of selective nitric oxide synthase (NOS) inhibitors. 1181 67

This short review address the concept of cytokine and cytokine families, their relationship with CNS, cytokine effects on nervous system (namely, sickness behavior) and the cellular source of brain cytokines. In addition, it provides selected data on the role of cytokines in mental disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease and AIDS-related dementia.
 ...
PMID:[Cytokines and psychiatry]. 1219 20

This study examined the validity of the four standard psychological paradigms that have been operationally defined within the CogState brief computerized cognitive assessment battery. Construct validity was determined in a large group of healthy adults. CogState measures of processing speed, attention, working memory, and learning showed strong correlations with conventional neuropsychological measures of these same constructs (r's = .49 to .83). Criterion validity was determined by examining patterns of performance on the CogState tasks in groups of individuals with mild head injury, schizophrenia, and AIDS dementia complex. Each of these groups was impaired on the CogState performance measures (Cohen's d's = -.60 to -1.80) and the magnitude and nature of this impairment was qualitatively and quantitatively similar in each group. Taken together, the results suggest that the cognitive paradigms operationally defined in the CogState brief battery have acceptable construct and criterion validity in a neuropsychological context.
 ...
PMID:Validity of the CogState brief battery: relationship to standardized tests and sensitivity to cognitive impairment in mild traumatic brain injury, schizophrenia, and AIDS dementia complex. 1939 50

Tryptophan is an essential amino acid that can be metabolised through different pathways, a major route being the kynurenine pathway. The first enzyme of the pathway, indoleamine-2,3-dioxygenase, is strongly stimulated by inflammatory molecules, particularly interferon gamma. Thus, the kynurenine pathway is often systematically up-regulated when the immune response is activated. The biological significance is that 1) the depletion of tryptophan and generation of kynurenines play a key modulatory role in the immune response; and 2) some of the kynurenines, such as quinolinic acid, 3-hydroxykynurenine and kynurenic acid, are neuroactive. The kynurenine pathway has been demonstrated to be involved in many diseases and disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Huntington's disease, AIDS dementia complex, malaria, cancer, depression and schizophrenia, where imbalances in tryptophan and kynurenines have been found. This review compiles most of these studies and provides an overview of how the kynurenine pathway might be contributing to disease development, and the concentrations of tryptophan and kynurenines in the serum, cerebrospinal fluid and brain tissues in control and patient subjects.
 ...
PMID:Kynurenine pathway metabolites in humans: disease and healthy States. 2208 78

The kynurenine pathway (KP) is a major degradative pathway of tryptophan ultimately leading to the production of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD(+)) and is also one of the major regulatory mechanisms of the immune response. The KP is known to be involved in several neuroinflammatory disorders including Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, AIDS dementia complex, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, Huntington's disease and brain tumours. However, the KP remains a relatively new topic for the field of multiple sclerosis (MS). Over the last 2-3 years, some evidence has progressively emerged suggesting that the KP is likely to be involved in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases especially MS. Some KP modulators are already in clinical trials for other inflammatory diseases and would potentially provide a new and important therapeutic strategy for MS patients. This review summarizes the known relationships between the KP and MS.
 ...
PMID:Understanding the roles of the kynurenine pathway in multiple sclerosis progression. 2208 96


1 2 Next >>