Studies of endocrine activity, plasma tryptophan and catecholamine excretion on psychosurgical patients

The Geoffrey Knight Psychosurgical Unit admits patients on a regular basis and thus offers special opportunities for studying severely ill psychiatric cases, all having one particular treatment under relatively controlled conditions. The opportunity has been taken to repeat various metabolic studies previously reported to be abnormal in some psychiatric illnesses. In the present investigation several measures of endocrinological activity were studied, as was plasma tryptophan, both free and bound. None of these data confirmed reports of abnormalities and neither did the values found at operation help to predict clinical outcome 1 year later, which was another possibility. Urinary catecholamines were also measured and 2 weeks after operation. Male patients, regardless of diagnosis, showed a mean increase in adrenaline output after operation compared with the pre-operative value and this was significantly different from the females, who showed a small mean decrease. The depressed patients showed a significant reduction in noradrenaline excretion after operation compared with before operation and this trend was enhanced in those of good outcome at 1 year, the difference from those who responded poorly being significant. It could be that the ventromedial lesion that is produced alters noradrenaline metabolism or autonomic activity in depression and this possibility merits further study.