[The effect of treatment on interleukin-1beta production in patients with first episode of juvenile psychosis].

Fifty-six patients (mean age 21,5+/-0,4 years) with first episode of endogenous psychosis (ICD-10 diagnosis F20.0, F20.2, F25) were studied before and after 4 and 8 weeks of the treatment with haloperidol and clozapine. The level of interleukin-1beta (IL-1beta) production increased significantly (p<0,05) in responders in the total group compared to the control one before and after the treatment. In patients with the prevalence of catatonic and catatonic-hallucinatory-delusion disorders, the increase of IL-1beta production was significant only to the 4-8 week of treatment. The increased level of cytokine production in patients with the prevalence of delusion and hallucinatory-delusion disorders reached a significance level (p<0,01) only in responders at all stages of the study. In non-responders, this index was similar to normal but significantly differed as compared to the subgroup of responders (p<0,05). In patients with affective and delusion disorders, the level of IL-1beta production did not differ from the controls during the treatment. In conclusion, the therapy proved more effective in patients with higher levels of IL-1beta production that suggests this index as a marker of immune system activation and a predictor of therapeutic efficacy.

[The relationship between clinical changes in schizophrenia, acoustic evoked potentials, and background electroencephalogram]. / O sopriazhennosti izmenenii klinicheskogo sostoianiia bol'nykh shizofreniei s parametrami slukhovykh vyzvannykh potentsialov i fonovoi élektroéntsefalogrammoi.

The study was made of relationship between the dynamics of neurophysiological parameters and the changes of clinical state assessed by the PANSS and the CGI in 17 male patients with schizophrenia. Significant correlations between the reduction of psychopathological symptoms by PANSS and an increase of P300 amplitude and spectral density of background EEG in delta-, theta-, alpha 1- and alpha 3-ranges and the reduction of psychotic symptoms by CGI and an increase density in delta-, theta-, alpha 1-diapasons were found. The findings are considered as the evidence of correlations between an improvement of clinical state and "normalization" of different processes of attention, thinking and memory reflected changes of the tested EEG parameters.

[Auditory evoked potentials in patients with schizophrenia and affective disorders]. / Slukhovye vyzvannye potentsialy u bol'nykh shizofreniei i affektivnymi rasstroistvami.

Eighteen patients with schizophrenia and 18 patients with affective disorders (depression) underwent regisTration of auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) recording in oddball paradigm. All the patients were in remission. In both groups of the patients, the N100 ERPs amplitudes to non-target stimuli were significantly smaller and N200 and P300 latencies were longer than in 18 normals. In the patient's group with affective disorders, prolongation of P200 and N100 ERPs latencies to target stimuli has been found. The group of patients with schizophrenia was characterized by P300 amplitude reduction. The results show stimuli processing decrease in patients with affective disorders, while in patients with schizophrenia a cognitive function disturbance was recorded.

[The role of group psychotherapy in combined modality therapy of juvenile endogenous depression]. / Mesto gruppovogo psikhokorrektsionnogo metoda v kompleksnoi terapii iunosheskikh éndogennykh depressii.

The paper presents the study in of the combined psychopharmaco-psychocorrective method designed specially for juvenile patients with endogenic depressive disorders. Psychocorrective measures included the method of "rehabilitation training of social habits" used on the stage of hospital therapy and psychocorrective training according to "social support" method used in group psychotherapy outpatiently. A 5 year follow-up study performed in 110 showed that psychotherapy has increased efficiency of the therapy in terms of both reduction of clinic disorders in the acute period and prophylaxis of the relapses as well as social readaptation.

[Neurophysiologic mechanisms of the disorders in recognition of emotions in endogenic depression]. / Neirofiziologicheskie mekhanizmy narusheniia raspoznavaniia émotsii pri éndogennoi depressii.

In 46 male patients with endogenic depressions of different nosology (22 patients with affective disorder, 24 with juvenile slow-progredient schizophrenia) and 22 healthy individuals (a control group) visual evoked potentials (EPs) were registered during recognition of emotionally positive, negative or neutral facial expression. It was found that deficient recognition of emotions in depressions was determined by alteration of different stages of information analysis. In inferio-temporal and occipetal cortical areas the Eps revealed delayed primary analisis of visual information and reduction of components responsible for classification stage and decision making. In anteriocentral cortical areas only late stages of analysis were altered, and they were depending on nosology of depressive sindrom. Dynamics of topographic maps revealed disturbance of analysis in the right hemisphere in patients with affective disorders and in left hemisphere in schisophrenics. In both groups of patients deficit of interhemispheric transfere was found.

[P300 auditory evoked potentials in schizophrenia]. / P300 slukhovykh vyzvannykh potentsialov pri shizofrenii.

P300 auditory evoked potentials were recorded in 27 schizophrenic patients in the standard oddball paradigm. P300 amplitude in the right frontal zone correlated positively with the age of the patients at the onset of disease. As compared with normal (18 subjects), schizophrenics showed both smaller P300 amplitudes and longer latencies. The findings are assumed to reflect impairment of information processing in schizophrenia. It is emphasized that the level of impairment is higher when the disease occurs in adolescence.

[Changes in the level of autoantibodies to the nerve growth factor in the blood serum of schizophrenia patients]. / Izmenenie urovnia autoantitel k faktoru rosta nervov v syvorotke krovi bol'nykh shizofreniei.

A study was made of 54 patients with different forms of schizophrenia: paranoid (8), shift-like (30), slow-progredient (16). According to ICD-10 the rubrics were: F20.00 and F20.01; F20.22 and F20.02; F21 respectively. Elevation of the level of autoantibodies (aAB) to nerve growth factor (NGF) 1,5-fold was registered in blood serum of schizophrenic patients by means of enzyme immunoassay as compared with 70 healthy controls. The dependence of aAB level upon the stage of the disease development was found: in the active phase there was a significant increase of aAB level as compared with the patients in remission (1.38 +/- 0.26 and 0.92 +/- 0.25 units of optical density, respectively). There were no differences in respect of different forms of disease. The authors suggest to use aAB level as the index of the disease activity.

[Neurophysiologic correlations of cognitive dysfunction in depressed patients with syndrome of juvenile asthenic deficiency]. / Neirofiziologicheskie korreliaty kognitivnoi disfunktsii u bol'nykh depressiei s sindromom iunosheskoi astenicheskoi nesostoiatel'nosti.

Peculiarities of cognitive process were studied in 34 right-handed endogenously depressed patients with "juvenile asthenic deficiency" ("endogener juveniler Versagensyndrome" according to J. Glatzel and G Huber, 1968) by means of visual evoked potentials (EP) in the emotional recognition task. Two control groups consisted of 19 healthy individuals and 20 patients with other types of depressions. The main and control groups were matched for age, sex, handedness and education level. Compared to controls the patients with "juvenile asthenic deficiency" demonstrated highly significant alterations in indices of EP late negative wave in anterior areas of the left hemisphere which related to neither the nosology of "juvenile asthenic deficiency" (cyclothymia, schizophrenia) nor the types of dominant cognitive disorders. Dependence on both nosology and clinical subtype of asthenic deficiency was found only for separate characteristics of earlier EP waves. The results suggest the disturbance of the final stages of information processing and the decision making specific for "juvenile asthenic deficiency".

[The functional activity of the lymphocyte subpopulations in patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective psychosis]. / Funktsional'naia aktivnost' subpopuliatsii limfotsitov u bol'nykh shizofreniei i shizoaffektivnym psikhozom.

The functional activity of natural killer (NK) and of T-helper (TH) lymphocytes was examined both in 19 patients with schizophrenia and in 6 patients with schizoaffective psychosis as well as in 93 control individuals. The patients were examined both before the treatment and two months after it. The cytotoxic level of NK lymphocytes was considerably decreased in all the patients before the treatment. The TH activity was decreased in 8 of 17 schizophrenic patients and in 1 of 4 schizoaffective patients observed during the acute period. The increase of cytotoxic NK activity was seen in patients with schizoaffective psychosis after the treatment while such alterations in schizophrenic patients were absent. The TH activity changed neither in schizophrenic nor in schizoaffective patients after the treatment.

[The formation of a collection of DNA from patients with endogenous psychoses and the prospects for its use in molecular genetic research in psychiatry]. / Formirovanie kollektsii DNK bol'nykh éndogennymi psikhozami i perspektivy ee ispol'zovaniia v molekuliarno-geneticheskikh issledovaniiakh v psikhiatrii.

A genetic study of psychiatric diseases meets a lot of difficulties because of incomplete penetrance, phenocopies, probable genetic heterogeneity. The progress in exploring of new effective markers and human genome mapping enables one to undertaken a systematic search for alleles confirming susceptibility to manic depressive illness and schizophrenia. It is important therefore to have in one's disposal the collection of DNA samples appropriate for different aspects of molecular genetic study. The collection of DNA samples deposited in National Centre for Mental Health of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences includes DNA of informative small-scaled families and a number of DNA from unrelated subjects with manic-depressive illness, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorders. This collection may be used for linkage analysis, association and sib-pair studies and for detection of mutations responsible for mental diseases.

[The recognition of the facial expression of emotions by patients with endogenous depression (clinico-psychophysiological research)]. / Raspoznavanie vyrazheniia émotsii na litse bol'nymi éndogennoi depressiei (kliniko-psikhofiziologicheskoe issledovanie).

The recognition of facial emotional expression in depressed patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and slow progressive schizophrenia (SPS) in acute state and in remission was studied in comparison with healthy persons. All the subjects were right-handed. The drawings of sad, neutral and happy faces followed by masking stimulus were displayed in the center field and in the left or right hemifield of vision on the computer screen for 80 ms. All the depressed patients revealed marked impairment of facial emotion recognition, especially for negative on, and disturbances of hemisphere asymmetry. There were some differences between MDD and SPS patients. The MDD patients showed more significant impairment of emotion recognition and right hemisphere disfunction. The SPS patients were less impaired and revealed mild worsening in the left hemisphere only. In remission MDD patients showed a significant improvement of emotion recognition contrary to SPS patients who failed to recover this function. The revealed emotion recognition disturbances in MDD patients are supposed to be dynamic, whereas in depressed patients with SPS it is considered to be a trait feature.

[Anti-somatostatin autoantibodies in the blood serum of patients with schizophrenia]. / Uroven' autoantitel k somatostatinu v syvorotke krovi bol'nykh shizofreniei.

Solid-phase IEA was used to measure the level of autoantibodies to somatostatin in the blood serum of 44 schizophrenics and 24 healthy donors. The patients suffering from schizophrenia manifested a higher (p less than 0.01) level of immune responsiveness of the blood serum to somatostatin (0.665 +/- 0.03) as compared to the control group (0.509 +/- 0.05). The main contribution to the differences between the groups as regards the parameter measured is made by patients with malignant (0.810 +/- 0.10) and paranoid (0.773 +/- 0.08) schizophrenia whereas the patients' subgroup with slow-progressive schizophrenia did not differ from normal regarding the level of autoantibodies to somatostatin in the serum (0.504 +/- 0.03). These tentative data agree with a hypothesis of the involvement of autoimmune processes into the development of schizophrenia.

[Specificity of electroencephalographic correlations of asthenic disorders in atypical juvenile asthenic-depressive conditions]. / K voprosu o spetsifichnosti élektroéntsefalograficheskikh korreliatov astenicheskikh rasstroistv pri atipichnykh iunosheskikh astenodepressivnykh sostoianiiakh.

Amplitude-interval factor analysis was made to study the EEG in young patients with atypical ++sub-depressive states (n-15) and depressive states (n-43) defined in the literature as "asthenic juvenile deficiency". It has been discovered that patients suffering from sluggish schizophrenia with prominent asthenic disorders differ from healthy test subjects, patients suffering from cyclothymia and those suffering from sluggish schizophrenia without well-defined asthenic symptomatology in significantly higher values of EEG factor related to the index, regularity and frequency of low-amplitude beta-activity as well as in the reduced values of the other EEG factor connected with the mean period of alpha-waves and with the theta-index. Based on the psychophysiological testing of structurally similar EEG factors, carried out earlier on healthy test subjects, the data obtained may be treated as reflection of the neurodynamic unbalance common to asthenic disorders in sluggish schizophrenia, which lies in abundance processes of cortical excitation and deficit of inhibitory processes of the active selective character. The intensity of depressive symptomatology correlated with relative deceleration of alpha-activity.

[Study of the processes of lipid peroxidation in patients with endogenous psychoses using gas chromatography]. / Izuchenie protsessov perekisnogo okisleniia lipidov u bol'nykh éndogennymi psikhozami s pomoshch'iu gazovoi khromatografii.

The processes of lipid peroxidation were studied in healthy subjects and patients with manic-depressive psychosis and schizophrenia using a non-invasive method based on chromatographic determination of endogenic pentane in the expired air. In patients with circular psychosis pentane concentration in the expired air did not differ from the norm, yet with advancing age it decreased (in contrast to an elevation in normal subjects). In schizophrenic patients pentane levels were significantly higher than in age-matched normal subjects. The level of the studied parameter was not correlated with the duration of the disease but showed a definite correlation with the severity of adverse disturbances in schizophrenia.

[Prognosis of a favorable outcome in juvenile slowly progressing neurosis-like schizophrenia based on catamnestic data]. / Prognoz blagopriiatnogo iskhoda iunosheskoi maloprogredientnoi nevrozopodobnoi shizofrenii na osnove dannykh otdalennogo katamnesza.

On the basis of the results of an 18-26-year-long follow up of 100 patients with juvenile slowly progressive neurosis-like schizophrenia with an onset of the disease in youth the authors have identified a group of patients (n = 25) who presented practical cure. Comparison of the peculiarities of neurosis-like disturbances and their dynamics during the active stage of the disease in this group and in patients in whom stable neurosis-like manifestations persisted up to the late stages of the disease (n = 75) has made it possible to determine those types of neurosis-like states which correlate with the outcome of the disease. Some clinical and pathogenetic signs have been identified which help specify some aspects of the clinical and social prognosis.

[Use of levamisole in the combined therapy of patients with slowly progressing juvenile schizophrenia]. / Ispol'zovanie levamizola v kompleksnoi terapii bol'nykh iunosheskoi maloprogredientnoi shizofreniei.

Immunomodulating drug Levamisole was studied as a component in the combined treatment of juvenile slow progredient schizophrenia. Apart from normalizing the immune parameters, the drug improved the patients' clinical conditions. Most prominent was its clinical effect in patients with immune system sensitive to the drug. The patient's condition ameliorated in relation with the features of his initial state. Treating the patients with depressive-asthenic states has yielded the best results. Weaker was the effect on patients with obsessive-phobic disorders. The least curable were senesto-hypochondriac and dysmorphophobic disorders with sensitive delusions of relation.

[Imipramine antibodies in endogenous depression in young people]. / Antitela k imipraminu pri éndogennykh depressiiakh iunosheskogo vozrasta.

The drug antibodies were radioimmunologically detected in 58.3% of depressive patients treated with Imipramine. A group of patients with the antibodies permanently present either proved fully resistant or showed a minor effect. A group with antibodies arising just at the start of the treatment displayed either complete remission or substantial improvement. Antibodies were not found in patients exhibiting full recovery or considerable improvement.