International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry 2. Properties and Units in the Clinical Laboratory Sciences. VI. Properties and Units in IOC Prohibited Drugs (IFCC-IUPAC Recommendations 1997).

The term designating a substance being an active ingredient of a drug may be a generic name, a nonproprietary name, a registered trade name, a fantasy name or other. This causes difficulties in the transmission of request and report on such substances to and from the clinical laboratories, and in the collating of this information from different sources. The document comprises a list of properties of drugs of abuse in biological fluids as defined by the International Olympic Committee Medical Code for use in electronic transmission systems. Standard systematic names are presented with a code value for each. The coding schemes thus prepared are accessible on Internet from C-NPU Home page address: http://inet.uni-c.dk/ qukb7642.

Transmission of the results of tests for International Olympic Committee-defined drugs of abuse.

The hardware and software facilities for electronic storage, transfer and handling of data is such that multipurpose databases can be made accessible without geographic restriction at low cost. The versatile and flexible underlying structures allow for ease of access and retrieval of data and gives presentation formats fully comparable to printed counterparts. Because of the apparent ease of use and because of the wider distribution of the information, misinterpretation is more likely to occur than in oral or written presentation for more restricted and more culturally homogeneous audiences. This necessitates some degree of harmonisation/standardisation of data on transfer, while allowing local expression forms at sender and receiver ends (Fig. 1). This document is part of an ongoing international effort to agree on some sort of "standardisation" of the transmission and presentation of "laboratory results". It centers on the domain of drugs of abuse as defined by the International Olympic Committee.

[Pathophysiologic regulatory mechanisms in chronic schizophrenia]. / Pathophysiologische Regelmechanismen bei chronisch Schizophrenen.

Two collectives of chronic schizophrenics were psychometrically rated by means of the BPRS and of Gebhardt's primary AMP-scales. Their scores of coexistent Positive and Negative Symptomatology were correlated with equivalents of catecholergic levels of tone as represented by plasma tyrosine concentration in its role as the catecholergic precursor. Levels of catecholergic tone state- and time-dependently correlated directly with Positive and inversely with Negative Symptomatology. Opposite ends of catecholergic tone from supra- to subnormal ranges ran parallel to a psychometric continuum from predominant Positive to predominant Negative Symptomatology, to a diagnostic continuum from "paranoid" to "disorganised/hebephrenic", and to a global metabolic continuum from under- to overweight. Findings did not support the hypothesis on psychotogenic dopaminergic supersensitivity. Postulated was a primary psychotogenic process of denervation or/and degeneration of a specific 'trigger system', and supersensitivity-induced neuronal damage was conjectured the biological substrate of Negative Symptomatology. A pathophysiological hypothesis put forth, corresponded with Cannon's Rules within the frame of functional neuronal plasticity.

[Differential diagnostic assessment of IV glucose tolerance in affective disorders (author's transl)]. / Zur differentialdiagnostischen Bewertung der i.v.-Glucose-Toleranz in affektiven Erkrankungen.

Glucose intolerance should be regarded as an unspecific, though obligatory phenomenon in endogenous-involutional phases and as an unspecific adaptive finding in somatically based depression. Therefore, it is without differential diagnostic meaning in classifying depressive disorders. On the other hand, normal values of glucose tolerance found in depressive syndromes clinically diagnosed as endogenous-involutional represent a likelihood of underlying organicity.

[Pathological lability of venous fasting blood sugar regulation in psychotic disease]. / Pathologische Labilität venöser Nüchternblutzucker-Regulation in psychotischen Erkrankungen.

The lability of peripheral venous postabsorptive blood sugar regulation was investigated in 98 patients suffering from floridly psychotic diseases (45 somatically based psychoses, 27 endogenous/involutional depressions, and 26 schizophrenic psychoses). In total, 259 times, in 30-sec intervals, 10 fasting blood sugar values each were determined (so-called 'Anderson curves'). The maximal normal range of 36 mg% of spontaneous blood sugar oscillations in normal probands was exceeded in 17% of depressive, in 15% of schizophrenic, and in 12% of somatically based psychoses. The frequency and probability of appearance of pathological Anderson curves proved independently of any clinical-psychiatric diagnosis, and only significantly correlated with the criterion 'psychotically ill'. Discussed are primary central deviations from nominal gluco-sensitive regulatory 'tone' as postulated cause of pathological lability of venous blood sugar homeostasis resulting. Besides additional, pre-known glucose-metabolic derangements accompanying certain neuropsychiatric syndromes, pathological Anderson curves in psychotic illness are looked at as unspecific functional deviations involving bipolar-adrenergic dysbalances.

Denervation treatment of affective disorders.

It was assumed that affective disorders of any aetiology are systemised adrenergic neuronal denervative conditions. If so, short-term pharmacological denervation must result in completion of pre-existing partial neuronal denervation and in subsequent postdenervation supersensitivity and neuronal recovery. Clinically controlled trials in depressive syndromes of various aetiology support this hypothesis.