Association between Changes in Serum Prolactin Levels after the Administration of Antipsychotics and 5-HT Transporter Polymorphism in Schizophrenic Patients / 대한정신약물학회지

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: 1) To compare prolactin responses to (and related clinical manifestations of) haloperidol, risperidone, and other atypical antipsychotics (clozapine, olanzapine, quetiapine, zotepine) with data from previous reports. 2) To investigate the association between changes in serum prolactin levels after the administration of antipsychotics and 44-bp insertion/deletion polymorphism in 5-HT transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) in Korean schizophrenics. METHODS: The subjects were 136 patients diagnosed schizophrenic according to the DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia who had taken antipsychotics for at least 3 months. The 136 patients consisted of the following 82 taking haloperidol (48 males and 34 females), 25 taking risperidone (14 males and 11 females), and 29 taking other atypical antipsychotics (18 males and 11 females). We measured serum prolactin concentrations by radioimmunoassay and investigated the clinical manifestations. We examined the genotype distribution and allele frequency of the 5-HTTLPR in all subjects by polymerase chain reaction of genomic DNA with primers flanking the promoter regions of the 5-HTT gene. Chi-square test, ANOVA and tukey test were used for statistical analysis with SAS 8.1 and p values of 0.05 or less were regarded as significant difference. RESULTS: Serum prolactin levels of patients taking haloperidol and risperidone were significantly higher than those taking other atypical antipsychotics (p<0.05). Females showed significantly higher prolactin levels than males (p<0.05). There was no significant difference in the genotype distribution and allele frequency of 5-HTTLPR among groups taking haloperidol, risperidone, and other atypicals. There was also no significant difference in genotype distribution and allele frequency of 5-HTTLPR between male and female schizophrenic patients. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that there was no association between serum prolactin levels after the administration of antipsychotics and 5-HTTLPR polymorphism in Korean schizophrenics.