Nicotinic acid as adjuvant therapy in newly admitted schizophrenic patients

A placebo-controlled, comparative clinical study was conducted to test the hypothesis that nicotinic acid as an adjuvant medication has a beneficial therapeutic effect over and above the effect which can be achieved by the administration of phenothiazine drugs alone, over a six-month period, in newly (recently) admitted schizophrenic patients.The most important single finding was that no statistically significant therapeutic difference was seen between the active treatment and the placebo groups; i.e., the addition of nicotinic acid or nicotinamide to the regular phenothiazine treatment regimen did not have any measurable therapeutic effect in this sample of patients. It was shown that patients in the placebo group received a lower total daily amount of phenothiazine drugs than those on either of the active substances. Furthermore, it was noted that the addition of the active substances did not reduce the number of days of hospitalization.

Nicotinic acid in the prevention and treatment of methionine-induced exacerbation of psychopathology in schizophrenics

In this placebo-controlled crossover study nicotinic acid, in a fixed dosage of 3000 mg. a day, produced statistically significant improvement in chronic hospitalized schizophrenic patients. We were able to reproduce the clinical observations and the results of previous workers; that is, the exacerbation of psychopathological symptoms by the combined administration of methionine and tranylcypromine. Nicotinic acid failed to prevent by prior administration or to relieve by subsequent administration, the methionine-tranylcypromine-induced exacerbation of psychopathology. This might have been due to the inadequate dosage of nicotinic acid given but the possibility of a toxic psychosis due to the metabolite, methionine sulfoximine, must be seriously considered.

Urinary steroid pattern in male hypogonadotrophic hypogonadism

During clinical studies on a 34-year-old man with marked hypogonadism secondary to pituitary gonadotrophin insufficiency, an attempt was made to determine whether the testes were capable of androgen production when stimulated by exogenous chorionic gonadotrophin (A.P.L.).Androgen excretion before and after chorionic gonadotrophin administration was studied. Total and fractionated 17-ketosteroid patterns suggested a severe Leydig cell deficiency which was confirmed by testicular biopsy.Panhypopituitarism was considered excluded by a normal response to metyrapone ditartrate, by a normal serum PBI and a normal radioactive iodine uptake. Genetic disorders were likewise excluded to the extent possible by determining that the chromosome pattern was normal and by determining that no similar condition existed in another member of the same family. The association of anosmia with gonadotrophin insufficiency in this case suggests a primary disorder in the hypothalamo-mamillary-tuber cinereum area.

Venation Polymorphism and Genetic Variability in Drosophila melanogaster Loew

Experimental evidence indicates that phenocopy production may provide an inflated estimate of the importance of genetic variability and recombination in the production of venation phenodeviants.