[Status-dependent neurochemical parameters in schizophrenic and affective diseases]

The dynamics of course, i.e., the marked psychopathological fluctuation in acute phases of schizophrenic and other idiopathic psychoses was little considered up to now in investigations referred to correlating clinical and neurochemical findings. Therefore, we selected subgroups of patients, classified as inactive or slight, moderate or severe process-active according to the operational defined actual psychopathological syndrome (Gross et al. 1988, Klosterkötter et al. 1989) at the time of taking of blood samples. We demonstrated in previous studies that the fluctuation and/or sudden development (minutes, hours, up to six days at the latest) of schizophrenic first rank symptoms and certain basic symptoms may reflect also an instability and process-activity of underlying neurochemical changes. In this study we have measured the concentrations of dopamine, noradrenaline, adrenaline, 5-HT, TSH, prolactin, HGH, melatonin, cortisol, T 3, T 4 and 28 amino acids in blood samples (examined 8 times within 24 hours) from 48 schizophrenic patients, divided in 4 subgroups (each 12 cases) with severe, moderate, slight or lacking process-activity, from 20 patients with (inactive or only slight active) depressive phases of affective psychoses and from normal controls. Marked process-active schizophrenics showed significantly higher levels of dopamine, noradrenaline and 5-HT, and significantly lower levels of TSH, compared to healthy controls and process-inactive schizophrenics with pure deficiency syndromes, that reveal a relative hypo-activity of catecholaminergic and presumably also of serotoninergic systems. In the subgroup of depressions were found decreased concentrations of noradrenaline, 5-HT, adrenaline and melatonin when compared to marked process-active schizophrenics.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)