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Query: UMLS:C0036341 (schizophrenia)
 60,220 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

The literature on lithium carbonate was reviewed for clues to the processes involved in mania. Lithium has proved effective therapeutically and prophylactically for mania and depressive disorders. Children and adolescents as well as adults tolerate lithium well. Side effects rarely are serious enough to necessitate having lithium therapy. Some success with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders has broadened the scope of lithium's therapeutic efficacy but also blunted the expectation for a direct relationship between lithium and the processes involved in mania. Research points to neurotransmitters as contributing to the etiology and symptom pattern of mania.
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PMID:Lithium therapy for mania and depression. 286 Feb 1

The authors describe 19 patients with severe tardive dyskinesia, 11 of whom had a diagnosis of affective or schizoaffective disorder rather than schizophrenia. Most patients had been receiving long-term neuroleptic treatment with few interruptions and had received only one or two different neuroleptics. Frequent eye blinking was the most prevalent prodromal sign of tardive dyskinesia (in seven patients). Four subtypes of tardive dyskinesia could be distinguished: choreoathetosis, tardive dystonia, blepharospasm, and tardive akathisia. Optimal pharmacotherapy most often consisted of combinations of neuroleptics, lithium carbonate, benzodiazepines, and antiparkinsonian drugs. However, after an average of 62 months, only five patients had markedly improved.
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PMID:Clinical forms of severe tardive dyskinesia. 288 62

To assess what factors determine the involuntary status of psychiatric patients, we reviewed the case records of 5729 patients consecutively admitted to one of four inpatient psychiatric facilities, including a mental hospital, in St. John's between October 1975 and October 1978. Of the 5729 patients 5005 (87.4%) were voluntary and 724 (12.6%) involuntary. Involuntary patients were more likely than voluntary patients to be male, single and unemployed and to have been referred by police or transferred from another facility to the mental hospital, where most of the involuntary admissions occurred. They had higher rates of previous admissions to a psychiatric facility and of suicidal and violent behaviour, were more likely to have a diagnosis of schizophrenia or mania and were less likely to be suffering from depression or a neurotic disorder. In correspondence with differences in diagnosis, involuntary patients stayed in hospital more than twice as long as voluntary patients, were less likely to receive electroconvulsive therapy, minor tranquillizers and antidepressants, and were more likely to receive neuroleptics and lithium carbonate. Stepwise logistic regression analysis revealed that only the source of referral and a diagnosis of neurotic disorder had an independent effect on admission status. The findings are discussed in the context of the controversy over the parens patriae approach v. the legal approach to involuntary admission of psychiatric patients.
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PMID:Factors associated with involuntary admission to psychiatric facilities in Newfoundland. 356 77

Conflicting findings regarding the prevalence of abnormal smooth-pursuit eye movements in patients with major affective disorders call into question the specificity of impaired smooth-pursuit eye movements to schizophrenia. We report that pursuit is impaired in 88% of lithium carbonate-treated affective disorder patients whose pursuit was normal prior to receiving this drug. Over half of lithium carbonate-treated affective disorder patients in remission also showed impairment of smooth-pursuit eye movements. In conjunction with recent prevalence data on family members of psychiatric patients, the findings support the specificity of abnormal pursuit as a biological trait associated with schizophrenia, but not with the major affective disorders. The mechanisms by which lithium carbonate impairs pursuit are discussed.
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PMID:Pharmacologic evidence for specificity of pursuit dysfunction to schizophrenia. Lithium carbonate associated with abnormal pursuit. 391 84

Diagnostic patterns for schizophrenia and affective psychosis were examined for all admissions to psychiatric facilities in New South Wales over a ten-year (1967-1977) period, before, during, and after lithium carbonate had been established as an accepted treatment. While the proportion of functional psychoses to total admissions remained relatively constant over the study, there was a relative decrease in schizophrenia, and a relative increase in the affective psychosis group. Analyses of sub-groups suggested, after controlling for the effects of time, that the introduction of lithium has been associated with an increase in diagnoses of mania and a decrease in diagnoses of paranoid schizophrenia, both for first admissions and for readmissions.
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PMID:Changes in the diagnoses of the functional psychoses associated with the introduction of lithium. 392 35

alpha-Adrenergic receptor function was assessed in platelets from drug-free schizophrenic patients and control subjects. The number of alpha-receptors was similar in platelet membranes from schizophrenic patients and control subjects. In intact platelets from schizophrenic male, but not female, patients, prostaglandin E1 (PGE1)-stimulated cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) level was less than in control subjects. This defect may be due, at least in part, to decreased adenylate cyclase activity. In platelet lysates from schizophrenic patients, but not from normal control subjects, adenylate cyclase activity was diminished and PGE1-stimulated adenylate cyclase activity could be restored partially by the addition of guanosine triphosphate. Treatment with neuroleptic drugs or lithium carbonate did not change alpha-receptor number or cAMP production in platelets from schizophrenic patients, but high doses of propranolol hydrochloride increased cAMP production without affecting the number of alpha-receptors. If the production of cAMP in neurons is similar to that in platelets, diminished cAMP production may be associated with a vulnerability to schizophrenia.
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PMID:alpha-Adrenergic receptor function in schizophrenia. Receptor number, cyclic adenosine monophosphate production, adenylate cyclase activity, and effect of drugs. 613 56

There is a growing evidence that the clinical distinction of schizophrenia from mania should be based on a multidimensional approach rather than on the presence of characteristic symptoms. In-patient community group meetings are rarely appreciated as one source of such differential diagnostic data. Some patients are observed to manifest group behaviour which belies the schizophrenic diagnoses with which they re-enter the hospital. Three illustrative cases are presented in which patients so identified were successfully treated with lithium carbonate alone. The clinical and theoretical implications of this phenomenon are discussed.
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PMID:Inpatient community meeting as an aid to psychiatric diagnosis. 613 86

Nuclear magnetic resonance produced by a FONAR QED 80 whole-body scanner with measurement in vivo of T1 proton relaxation time was used in 20 patients with the clinical diagnosis of bipolar affective disorder. Diagnoses were based on Research Diagnostic Criteria, Diagnostic Statistical Manual III code 296.66, and on Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia. Proton T1 relaxation times were measured in all patients and in 18 normal controls before and after lithium carbonate treatment. Normal values of T1 in frontal and temporal lobes were 210 +/- 10 msec. All but three patients had prelithium T1 values higher than the controls (264 +/- 8.8 msec). After lithium therapy of 900 mg/day for 10 days, serum lithium levels were in the therapeutic range of 0.5-1.5 mEq/L, and patient T1 values were near normal levels (208 +/- 8.0 msec). One patient with a prelithium level within normal range proved to have cyclothymic disorder and not bipolar affective disorder; two patients did not complete the study. This study shows a statistically significant difference (p less than 0.01) in the behavior of hydrogen protons in bipolar affective disorder, which has not previously been reported in medical literature.
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PMID:Nuclear magnetic resonance in bipolar affective disorders. 641 Jul 8

A comprehensive overview of the clinical aspects of lithium therapy is presented. Emphasis is placed on recent developments regarding the clinical uses of Li2CO3 in non-psychiatric conditions. The established efficacy of the drug in the treatment and prophylaxis of mania and bipolar affective disorders is noted, and the evidence supporting the use of lithium salts as a prophylactic agent in unipolar depression, aggressive behavior, schizophrenic disorders and organic brain dysfunction is discussed. The use of lithium carbonate in various disorders of movement and in certain extrapyramidal diseases is summarized, as are the results of its trials in alcoholism and drug abuse. In addition, uses of Li2CO3 in asthma, thyroid diseases, granulocytopenia, headache, bowel disease, anesthesiology, cardiology, and sleep disorders are summarized. The data suggests the potential effectiveness of Li2CO3 in a variety of clinical conditions other than those for which it is classically indicated, provided more detailed double-blind studies are performed.
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PMID:Clinical uses of lithium salts. 641 55

The action of central nervous system mechanisms involved in sensory gating was assessed in acutely psychotic manic patients. An early positive component of the auditory average evoked response, recorded at the vertex 50 msec after a click stimulus, was studied. Stimuli were delivered at 10-sec intervals to establish a base-line response. Sensory gating mechanisms were then tested using a conditioning-testing paradigm to assess the change in response to a second stimulus following the first at either 0.5-, 1.0- or 2.0-sec intervals. A similar paradigm had been used previously to assess deficits in this function in acute and chronic schizophrenics. We found a deficit in sensory gating in acutely manic patients. similar to that found in schizophrenics, although the variability in response was more marked in the manic patients. We followed these patients during their treatment on lithium carbonate and found a return of these neuronal functions towards normal values which corresponded to their clinical improvement. A series of stable euthymic bipolar patients were found to have responses indistinguishable from normal controls. The data suggest that deficits in neuronal gating functions, similar to those found in schizophrenia, can be seen during acute mania but these deficits return to normal as the acute psychosis abates.
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PMID:Neurophysiological studies of sensory gating in mania: comparison with schizophrenia. 641 9


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