Cyclic nucleotides in manic patients treated with lithium carbonate

ABSTRACT

In this work, 24 patients suffering from manic disease were studied.They were randomly divided into 2 groups placebo group [11 patients] and lithium treated group [13 patients]. The control group was composed of 10 sex and age matched healthy subjects. Before and after treatment clinical assessment of the manic state using Beigel scale was carried out. Plasma cAMP were cGMP were determined by radioimmunoassay.It could be concluded from the results of this study that alterations of second messengers cAMP and cGMP constitute a major effect of lithium therapy by which it could ameliorate the manic symptoms. This is strongly favoured by the concomitant positive correlation between cAMP changes and changes of the beigel scores of clinical assessment of the manic state