[Psychotropic drugs as tools for clinical research into schizophrenia (author's transl)]

There is considerable similarity between paranoid schizophrenia and psychoses provoked by dopaminergic overstimulation in the central nervous system. The fact that neuroleptics are able to block dopaminergic neural activity has led to the hypothesis that there might exist a common biochemical substrate for schizophrenia and e. g. the amphetamine psychoses. Dopaminergic overstimulation may be elicited by different drugs interacting with the dopamine metabolism e. g. dopamine-beta-hydroxylase inhibition (disulfiram, fusaric acid); monoamine-oxidase-inhibition (phenelzine, tranylcypromine); dopamine release (amphetamine); stimulation of postsynaptic dopamine receptors (bromocriptine, apomorphine). Resulting psychotic symptoms consist of ideas of reference, delusions, visual and acustic hallucinations in a clear setting of consciousness. Psychoses occur usually in subjects, who have suffered from various psychiatric illnesses, which have apparently in common a reduced monoamine-oxidase activity in platelets. It is concluded from various biochemical findings, that psychoses resulting from dopaminergic overstimulation and schizophrenia have different biological substrates.