Abstract
MANY psychotropic drugs have been shown to interfere with monoamine metabolism in the brain1,2. Recently, interest has been focused on tryptophan and 5-hydroxy-tryptamine metabolism in mental depression3,4. During combined treatment with tryptophan and a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) in healthy volunteers, mental effects described as drunkenness and hyperreflexia appeared5. In schizophrenic patients, the same combination of drugs caused central nervous stimulation and varying effects on the disease symptoms6–8 (reviewed in ref. 9). In contrast, 5-hydroxytryptophan also in combination with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor is reported to have no such effects on schizophrenic patients7,10. This discrepancy may depend on an accumulation of tryptamine after treatment with MAOI and tryptophan but not 5-hydroxytryptophan. Because of these findings we have made therapeutic investigations of schizophrenic patients given single doses of monoamine precursors and at the same time made repeated estimations of acid monoamine metabolites in the lumbar cerebrospinal fluid. Ashcroft et al. have pointed out that ventricular CSF rich in acid monoamine metabolites might reach the lumbar tap site if large amounts of cerebrospinal fluid were tapped11. In our study, however, the concentration of the acid monoamine metabolite which was uninfluenced by the treatments was unaffected by repeated tapping of the lumbar fluid. 5-Hydroxyindole acetic acid (5-HIAA) and homovanillic acid (HVA) in the cerebrospinal fluid were estimated by the methods of Roos12 and Andén, Roos and Werdinius13. Our patients had been in hospital for many years, and 14 days before these studies were undertaken all treatment was stopped.
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PERSSON, T., Roos, BE. Clinical and Pharmacological Effects of Monoamine Precursors or Haloperidol in Chronic Schizophrenia. Nature 217, 854 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1038/217854a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/217854a0
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