Interactions between dopamine and prostaglandins on vascular reactivity to noradrenaline: dopamine inhibits the action of PGE1

Schizophrenia as a membrane lipid disorder which is expressed throughout the body

Clinical, biochemical and genetic evidence now indicates that schizophrenia is a disorder of membrane phospholipid metabolism associated with increased loss of highly polyunsaturated fatty acids from membranes owing to enhanced activity of a phospholipase A2. This changes the properties of membranes throughout the body and is responsible for such physical abnormalities as reduced vasodilator responses to niacin and histamine and altered immunological functions. A modest membrane abnormality is likely to produce its most serious consequences in the brain, which requires the co-ordinated sequential and parallel activities of millions of neurons. The concept leads to testable proposals for relatively simple and safe treatment modalities.

How information processing mode could affect prostaglandin E1 metabolism and lung inactivation: relevance of hemispheric specialization, neurotransmitter asymmetry and brain reactivity

Due to asymmetry of brain neurotransmitters and differential hemispheric information processing modes, it is suggested that the excessive use of one information processing mode could engender a state of brain reactivity whose neurochemical correlates would be either a rise in melatonin or beta-endorphin in systemic circulation. Since melatonin and beta-endorphin have opposite effects on lung-mediated regulation of prostaglandins, it is further suggested that the pulmonary inactivation of prostaglandin E1 would either be increased or inhibited. Low levels of PGE1 would engender high levels of PGE2 whose effects would explain the findings in schizophrenics of: 'reducing' pattern of visual evoked response, cerebral atrophy, and viral and autoimmune phenomena. The primacy of the disordered cognitive style in leading up to the immunological, biochemical and neuropathological processes is stressed. Implications of this model for understanding depression, anxiety and phobic disorders, autism, attention deficit disorder, obesity, alcoholism, smoking, drug addiction, sexual deviations, and certain psychosomatic and psychophysiological disorders are suggested.