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)

We studied the immunglobulin synthesis of peripheral blood lymphocytes of healthy blood donors and of patients suffering from acute schizophrenia and endogenous depression. The detection of cytoplasmic immunglobulins was performed by immunofluorescence. The schizophrenic patients showed an increased immunglobulin synthesis without cultivation of lymphocytes, after cultivation for 7 days and after pokeweed mitogen stimulation. This activation of B cells could be the result of disturbances in the prostaglandin formation and activation.
 ...
PMID:[Schizophrenia and B-lymphocyte alteration--a hypothesis]. 635 92

The promise of an easily administered and highly specific test for depression has produced a rapidly growing literature, which now contains numerous exceptions to the specificity described earlier as well as misgivings about the test's performance when endogenous depression is rare. Due to its modest sensitivity and the effect of prevalence on positive predictive value, the DST is of little use as a screening test. These limitations, however, do not affect its use as a confirmatory test if the suspicion of 'endogenous' depression is strong. According to the large majority of studies, the DST is rarely abnormal in healthy controls or in schizophrenics. Some of the exceptions are probably due to the lack of appropriate exclusion criteria, recruitment bias, nonspecific assays for cortisol, the use of overly broad definitions of schizophrenia. The possibility remains that some schizophrenics, perhaps the ones in which negative symptoms predominate, are truly nonsuppressors. This is certainly true for patients with dementia and the DST now shows little promise as a diagnostic aid when that disorder is suspected. In light of family history, follow-up and sleep studies, the occurrence of abnormal DST results among patients with such diagnoses as schizophreniform disorder and borderline personality is more likely to indicate diagnostic heterogeneity than DST nonspecificity. Nonsuppression is specific to 'endogenous' depression in the large majority of reports despite considerable differences in the 4 most commonly studied definitions. The few studies which applied 2 or more definitions to the same sample found marked specificity for one and very little for another definition, however, and did not find them to be interchangeable. Despite the use of operational criteria, occult rater variance among investigators poses a serious problem for the study of affective disorder. Studies so far suggest that the DST can figure prominently in the solution.
 ...
PMID:The use of laboratory tests in psychiatric diagnosis: the DST as an example. 639 22

This paper describes the use of serial neuroendocrine challenge studies in the assessment of depressive disorder, specifically the dexamethasone suppression test (DST) and thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) stimulation test. The combined use of these challenge tests revealed high sensitivity (67%) and high predictive value for the identification of endogenous depression in contrast to schizophrenia (p less than 0.025) or nondepressed patients (p less than 0.005). Further, normalization or persistence of dysregulation of these tests was correlated with clinical outcome at 6 months. Normalization of the DST occurred in 26 of 32 patients (82%) and was significantly correlated with the timing of symptomatic improvement (p less than 0.01). Five of six patients (84%) who never normalized the DST suffered an early relapse in contrast to 4 of 26 patients who did normalize (p less than 0.005). Unlike the DST, normalization of the blunted thyrotropin (TSH) response to TRH injection was not significantly correlated with the timing of symptomatic improvement. Only 8 of 19 patients (42%) ever normalized the TSH response. However, none of these 8 normalized patients suffered relapse within 6 months in contrast to 7 of 11 patients (64%) who did not normalize (p less than 0.025). Thus, failure of normalization of either the DST or TRH test was associated with a group of patients at high risk for early relapse. In this study, the use of prophylactic antidepressant medications did not avert relapse in 9 of 11 relapsed patients who had persistent neuroendocrine dysregulation.
 ...
PMID:The application of serial neuroendocrine challenge studies in the management of depressive disorder. 640 62

The phenomenology of 96 depressive paroxysms in 56 preschool and early school age children suffering from paroxysmal schizophrenia and cyclothymia was studied. It was concluded that the major characteristics of child depressions included their "masked" character with the prevalence of ideational disturbances and the predominance of anxiety and fear, a tendency toward excessive fearfulness, rarity and naivity of self-condemnation ideas, a pronounced nature of the dysphoric mood tone, a tendency toward paroxysmal episodes of fear, dysphoria, restlessness, somatoalgetic crises, changeable nature of depressive symptomatology, its liability to environmental influence, a peculiar diurnal rhythm of affect, and a reactive nature of the development of depressive disturbances. Six clinical variants of endogenous depression in children were identified.
 ...
PMID:[Endogenous depression in children]. 665 86

Identical surveys, designed to assess attitudes toward training and treatment in psychiatry, were distributed to the half of all third-year residents in 1976, 1978, and 1980. The 1976 survey results revealed considerable support for the medically oriented aspects of training and for organic approaches to treating endogenous depression and schizophrenia. Residents rated the treatment modalities for alcoholism differently than they did for schizophrenia and depression. Results from the 1978 and 1980 surveys replicated the 1976 findings, suggesting remarkable stability in attitudes. Changes in attitude over the three survey years may require a greater time span to manifest.
 ...
PMID:The organic-dynamic continuum in psychiatry: trends in attitudes among third-year residents. 705 82

Twenty-three depressive inpatients and the same number of matched non-psychiatric controls were examined on three occasions - following admission, 14 days after, and 28 days after the admission - by administering a self-rating questionnaire of time awareness and Hamilton's Rating Scale for Depression (HRS). The patients were found to feel time passing slowly. This was correlated with the severity of depression expressed as the total HRS score. No significant differences emerged between diagnostic groups, namely endogenous depression, neurotic depression, and schizophrenia or paranoid state with depressive symptoms. Correlations of the time awareness with symptoms listed in the HRS also denied a specific relationship of time awareness to specific diagnoses. The subjective feeling of slow time flow reflects, therefore, the depth of depressive state in general, which is nevertheless not specific to any diagnostic subcategory.
 ...
PMID:Time passes slowly for patients with depressive state. 712 24

The authors gave the CES-D, a self-report depression symptom scale, to 515 people drawn from a longitudinal community survey. The subjects were also interviewed using the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia (SADS). From the information collected on the SADS, the subjects were given diagnoses based on Research Diagnostic Criteria. The results indicate a modest relationship between self-reported symptoms of depression and the diagnosis of a major or minor depression. However, the groups defined as "cases" by such reports also include many people with other diagnoses or with no diagnoses at all. Thus, symptom scales are useful for the screening of depressed persons in research studies but are only rough indicators of clinical depression in the community.
 ...
PMID:Use of a self-report symptom scale to detect depression in a community sample. 742 60

Twenty patients suffering from schizophrenia and 36 patients suffering from endogenous depression underwent a standardized heart rate analysis before drug therapy. The patient's parameters of heart rate variability (HRV), which are controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system and which are independent of heart rate, did not significantly differ from the HRV parameters of normal control subjects. Ten of the patients with schizophrenia were treated with 200-400 mg of clozapine/day as monotherapy, while the other ten patients received a combination of different psychotropic drugs. The depressed patients were either treated with 150 mg of amitriptyline/d (n = 24) or 20 mg of paroxetine/d (n = 12) as monotherapy, respectively. After treatment with an average of 300 mg of clozapine/d for 4 weeks or with 150 mg of amitriptyline/day for 2 weeks, all of the patients HRV parameters had significantly decreased (P < 0.001). At this time, about 90% of these patients fulfilled the criteria of cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy. However, treatment with 20 mg of paroxetine/day for 2 weeks had no impact on any of the heart rate parameters. Under amitriptyline treatment, HRV parameters were found to correlate significantly with the plasma levels of amitriptyline/nortriptyline in a group of 104 depressed patients. Thus, determination of decreased HRV parameters is suggested to be a useful tool for the detection of overdosage with amitriptyline. It has not yet been elucidated whether or not the observed HRV decrease, which is probably at least in part due to the anticholinergic side effects of clozapine and amitriptyline, has any impact on patient health.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
 ...
PMID:[Effects of psychopharmacologic therapy on heart rate variation]. 747 5

Abnormally low tyramine test values are known to be markers for vulnerability to unipolar, but not bipolar, endogenous depression. In the present study, 37 women with recent postnatal depression (25 major, 12 minor) and 22 puerperal controls with no depressive disorder, all assessed by Schedule for Affective Disorder and Schizophrenia (SADS-L) interview, together with 17 other controls, underwent the test. No significant differences in tyramine sulfate output were demonstrated between the different groups. Those subjects with endogenous features according to Newcastle score (n = 7) or Research Diagnostic Criteria (RDC) (n = 6) also had normal output. Thus, the tyramine test does not appear to be a useful marker for vulnerability to postnatal depression. Over half the subjects recalled that their postnatal depression had started in the first 2 weeks postpartum. Of the total of 62 postpartum subjects interviewed with the SADS-L, ten recalled a period of euphoria in the first postpartum week, which met RDC for hypomania and eight of them went on to become depressed postnatally. An additional patient from the total group was hospitalized with mania.
 ...
PMID:The tyramine test is not a marker for postnatal depression: early postpartum euphoria may be. 814 83

We found an increased lymphocyte proliferation after stimulation with an antigen "cocktail" in 49 schizophrenic patients and 37 patients suffering from affective psychosis, compared with 45 healthy control subjects. On the basis of this and other findings such as increased numbers of CD3+ and CD4+ cells, an increased ratio of CD4+/CD8+ cells, and a reduced level of suppressor cell activity in schizophrenia and endogenous depression, we investigated the influence of the human leukocyte antigen-Class I (HLA-A, HLA-B, HLA-C) system on the altered immune function and evaluated the relationship to immune function of a family history of psychiatric disorders. A cluster analysis of cases with regard to the HLA-Class I antigens was first performed in a group of 133 healthy control subjects, and two immunogenetically different clusters were found; then 86 patients (49 schizophrenics, 37 affective psychoses) for whom immune functional data were available were assigned to the two HLA-I clusters that had been determined in the control subjects. Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) showed no differences in immune function between the two clusters. With respect to the cluster assignment and the family history of psychiatric diseases, a two-way ANOVA revealed significant differences in the lymphocyte response to the antigen cocktail, in the number of CD8+ cells, and in one suppressor cell assay. When patients were compared by ANOVA on the basis of family history of psychiatric disorder, patients with a positive family history showed a significantly higher number of CD4+ cells and a higher CD4+/CD8+ ratio. Moreover, certain HLA genes, especially HLA-A1, HLA-B8, HLA-B16, and HLA-C2 seemed to be related to the immune function and/or to the immune function and the family history.
 ...
PMID:Cellular immunity, HLA-class I antigens, and family history of psychiatric disorder in endogenous psychoses. 827 43


<< Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next >>