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

Intraperitoneal injection of FK 33-824 produced apomorphine-like stereotyped behavior in rats. Antagonism of this stereotypy by naloxone and neuroleptics suggests that FK 33-824 can activate opiate and dopamine receptors in the brain. Because increased dopaminergic neuronal activity is thought to be involved in schizophrenia and dopamine-mediated stereotypy has been used as an animal model for this illness, these results are consistent with an involvement of endogenous opiate-like peptides in schizophrenia. This involvement provides a possible mechanism for the reported improvement in schizophrenic psychosis produced by naloxone.
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PMID:Dopamine-mediated behavior produced by the enkephalin analogue FK 33-824. 23 59

Nine patients diagnosed as having acute schizophrenic psychosis were treated with chlorpromazine. Their clinical response to drug treatment was measured by the use of a clinical rating scale developed from the Present State Examination, and a nurses rating scale. Plasma levels of chlorpromazine (CPZ), 7-hydroxychlorpromazine (7OHCPZ), monodesmethylchlorpromazine (NOR1CPZ) and chlorpromazine sulphoxide (SOCPZ), were monitored during the period of hospital treatment. Correlations were made between the increase in plasma levels of drug or metabolites and improvement in the different PSE scores. These showed that the most significant correlations occurred when symptoms with high diagnostic significance for schizophrenia (Group 1) and symptoms rating perceptual disorders (P) were correlated with plasma 7OHCPZ levels in plasma samples taken before the first morning dose of CPZ. The ration of 7OHCPZ to CPZ in these samples increased significantly as clinical ratings improved, this correlation being most highly significant against the Group 1 and P scores. The ratio of 7OHPCZ to SOCPZ increased significantly only in the case of Group 1 and P scores. This indicates a preferential shift of CPZ metabolism towards the formation of the active 7OHCPZ during the period of clinical improvement.
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PMID:Correlation between plasma chlorpromazine and its metabolites and clinical ratings in patients with acute relapse of schizophrenic and paranoid psychosis. 91 19

This study is a replication and extension of past work carried out by Brown, Birley and Wing (1972) concerning the influence of family life on the course of schizophrenia. In the original research the index of emotion expressed by a key relative about the patient at the time of key admission proved to be the best single predictor of symptomatic relapse in the nine months after discharge from hospital. In the present study this main finding of Brown et al has been replicated for two clinically different groups of psychiatric patients. The expressed emotion of the relative again seems to be associated with relapse independently of all other social and clinical factors investigated. In addition, important additive effects between various social influences and pharmacological treatments have been revealed which make it possible to predict relapse patterns in schizophrenia with considerable precision. The patterns of these relationships with relapse are different for the two clinical groups studied, patients with schizophrenic psychosis and with depressive neurosis.
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PMID:The influence of family and social factors on the course of psychiatric illness. A comparison of schizophrenic and depressed neurotic patients. 96 48

Psychiatric illnesses can be conceived of as experiments of nature, providing a variety of pathopsychological mechanisms which may elucidate normal psychological processes. Clinically the reactive psychoses are predominantly psychogenic reaction types. They present disturbances of higher nervous activity, similar to those of the neuroses. The unconditional reflex activity is practically as in normal controls, and the most outstanding finding was the large effect of psychodynamic complex structures. This is a physiological parallel to the clinical manifestations with great concern over experienced mental trauma. In the manic-depressive psychoses the most characteristic feature is a marked disturbance of unconditional reflex activity. This factor may be an important physiological mechanism underlying the more biological than psychodynamic reaction type and partly explain the changes of mood and associated interferences with sleep, body weight, sexual activity, aggression and other instinctual and vegetative functions. Schizophrenic psychoses also present changes of unconditional reflex activity, predominantly in the direction of inhibition of response. In addition there are severe dissociations within and between the three levels of unconditional reflexes and the two signaling systems. It is suggested that schizophrenia represents a functional maladaptation, which can be explained from the principles of autokinesis and schizokinesis established by Gantt in animal experiments. Prognostic models based on experimentally established impairment of performances were shown to predict long-term risks of schizophrenic defects just as well as models based on constellations of clinical symptoms. I would predict that psychophysiology and experimental psychology will become increasingly more important for establishing diagnosis and prognosis in the functional psychoses. The data of this article point toward a basis for a prophylactic psychiatry.
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PMID:Studies of higher nervous activity in functional phychoses. 123 57

In order to investigate the brain morphological differences between typical schizophrenia and atypical psychosis, the brain CTs of 41 patients with typical schizophrenia, 27 patients with atypical psychosis (ATP), and 20 controls were examined. The schizophrenics had larger values for 9 CT indices, i.e., interhemispheric fissure (IHF) index, VBR, 2 lateral ventricles (L-V) and 3rd ventricle (III-V) indices, and 4 sylvian fissure (SF) indices, while the values of ATP patients for 3 SF indices were greater than for the controls. Moreover, the schizophrenics had greater III-V and L-V indices than the ATP patients. The correlation matrix of CT indices indicates that the III-V index correlated well with the other CT indices, whereas the VBR, IHF and right SF indices did not. Therefore, it was speculated that there might be 3 subgroups, each of which has a main focus of alteration in the above-mentioned regions. Therefore, all the cases were divided by means of a cluster analysis into 5 groups. Group I, which contained mainly normal controls, and Group II, which consisted mainly of atypical psychosis patients, had no abnormal CT findings. Group III, which comprised mainly ATP patients and paranoid type schizophrenics, had right SF enlargement. Group IV, which showed significant IHF enlargement, and the residue group, which had larger VBR and significant left SF enlargement, consisted mostly of schizophrenics. Thus, our results suggest that the classification by CT data corresponds on the whole to our clinical diagnosis, according to which schizophrenic psychosis is divided into typical schizophrenia and atypical psychosis, and that each of the two psychosis groups may be further classified into distinct subgroups.
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PMID:Multivariate analyses of CT findings in typical schizophrenia and atypical psychosis. 148 53

The advent of powerful molecular biological techniques have already led to the discovery of chromosomal loci linked to some genetically transmitted diseases. These techniques, however, lose their power if applied to a disease trait that is not Mendelian in its transmission. The low familial prevalence of psychiatric diseases such as schizophrenia make these techniques unsuitable for linkage studies of these conditions, if identification of schizophrenia relies solely on the clinical manifestation of the schizophrenic psychosis. Broadening the disease phenotype in diseases such as schizophrenia, with low recurrence risk, and narrowing it in diseases such as major affective disorder, with very high recurrence risk, may be an effective strategy for linkage studies of these diseases. Several alternative phenotypes are discussed, including smooth pursuit eye movement abnormalities, event related potentials, and deficient attentional deployment as measured by the continuous performance test. The strategy assumes that schizophrenia is a pleiotropic disorder, and that the psychosis is the rare form of the condition. The paper focuses principally on smooth pursuit eye movement abnormalities, and claims a plausible place for them as an independent expression of schizophrenia. With this strategy, the possibility for successful linkage studies increases, since familial distributions of schizophrenia and pursuit abnormalities, considered together, appear to fit an autosomal dominant pattern.
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PMID:Behavioral markers of schizophrenia useful for genetic studies. 149 61

German language psychiatry has had and still has much difficulty in getting rid of the dichotomy of endogenous psychosis as set by Kraepelin. The concept which makes a distinction between schizophrenic psychosis and manic-depressive psychosis grants the former a predominant position by applying Jasper's hierarchic rule: the presence of symptoms regarded as schizophrenic indubitably attributes the disorder to schizophrenia. Such classification, however, does not necessarily imply that schizophrenia and cyclothymia (word proposed by K. Schneider for manic-depressive psychosis) represent separate nosological entities. It is admitted that it is possible for each group to include diseases whose hereditary transmission is not necessarily due to the same genetic predisposition. Thus, German language psychiatry has well accepted the possibility that bipolar manic-depressive psychosis and unipolar depressions represent separate etiologies. For most German-speaking psychiatrists, however, the distinction between endogenous and psychogenic depressions still remains a current assumption. The distinction between these two types of depression is generally made with reference to an "endogenous item profile" or to a depressive endogenomorphous axial syndrome. Only a few authors have accepted the model of continuity between these two types of depression proposed by the London school. The Hamburg school gave a new dimension to the conceptualization of manic-depressive psychosis by drawing attention on the existence of "rapidly alternating mixed states" which are much more common than the stable mixed conditions described by Kraepelin. On the basis of this concept and by questioning the validity of Jaspers' hierarchic rule, the Vienna school has considerably extended the limits of affectives psychosis to the detriment of the wide concept of schizophrenia described by K. Schneider.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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PMID:[Development of the manic-depressive concept in German language psychiatry]. 160 Sep 5

A hypothesis of psychosis localization in schizophrenia was derived from studying metabolic alterations in rat brain in response to phencyclidine hydrochloride administration. Since phencyclidine and its selective agonist dizocilpine maleate (MK801) induced overlapping and long-lasting metabolic alterations predominantly in limbic areas, the hypothesis developed that schizophrenic patients with psychosis would evidence functional abnormalities in limbic circuits compared with normal controls. Accordingly, 12 actively psychotic, drug-free patients with schizophrenia and matched normal controls underwent functional brain scans using positron emission tomography and fluorodeoxyglucose. Regions of interest were identified on five matched axial slices in each patient and control subject, and average metabolic rates were calculated. Patients with schizophrenia showed a significantly lower regional cerebral metabolic rate of glucose in the hippocampus and the anterior cingulate cortex than did normal controls, but not in neocortical areas or in the extrapyramidal system. When the group of schizophrenic patients was divided into deficit and nondeficit types, a preliminary exploratory analysis suggested thalamic, frontal, and parietal cortical hypometabolism in the deficit subgroup, with normal metabolism in the nondeficit patient group in those areas; in contrast, hippocampal and anterior cingulate cortical metabolism was reduced in both deficit and nondeficit subtypes. These results suggest that the limbic system, especially the hippocampus, is functionally involved in schizophrenic psychosis and that different manifestations of schizophrenia may involve different neuronal circuits.
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PMID:Limbic system abnormalities identified in schizophrenia using positron emission tomography with fluorodeoxyglucose and neocortical alterations with deficit syndrome. 162 43

In ten patients with schizophrenic psychosis and ten patients with multiple sclerosis, the coping and compensation strategies were examined by means of semistructured interviewing. The following categories were considered: 1. avoidance; 2. habituation and/or adaptation to the disease; 3. efforts to compensate the deficits by will-power; 4. efforts to train certain types of behaviour; 5. self-treatment; 6. disease awareness and insight. Examples for these categories are given for both groups of patients. There is a surprising similarity in the statements made by the schizophrenic patients and those with multiple sclerosis. All of the patients with multiple sclerosis had developed coping strategies against psychological symptoms. It is suggested that the neuropsychological deficits in multiple sclerosis resemble the symptoms of reduced energetic potential observed in schizophrenia. In both groups efforts should be made to activate the compensation strategies by adequate training procedures.
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PMID:[Coping and compensation strategies of patients with disseminated encephalomyelitis and of patients with schizophrenic psychoses]. 163 49

Elementary aspects of the usefulness and impact of chaos theory to an understanding of schizophrenia are discussed. In addressing the question 'Is there chaos in schizophrenia?', attention is limited to schizophrenic psychosis. A differentiated view of chaos as metaphor, analogy and mathematical/physical concept is presented with emphasis upon how the latter may apply to empirical knowledge of schizophrenic psychosis. The typical behavior of both psychotic schizophrenic patients and general chaotic systems, and the dynamical analysis of time-series data extracted from such systems, are reviewed. A general hypothesis connecting chaos and schizophrenia is introduced and analyzed. Arguments are provided in favor of the hypothesis at sociological, psychological, and biological scales of manifestation. This makes possible a model-independent 'chaos theory approach' to schizophrenia and the criteria necessary to test it. Some consequences of this approach are briefly considered. The original question is rephrased with the technical language of chaos theory: 'Are chaotic attractors diagnostic markers for schizophrenia?' or 'Is schizophrenia a dynamical disease?'. A few implications of viewing schizophrenia as a dynamical disease are discussed.
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PMID:Chaos theory and schizophrenia: elementary aspects. 166 31


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