Prevalence of acute intermittent porphyria in a Mexican psychiatric population

Psychiatric Aspects of Acute Porphyria: a Comprehensive Review

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

The aim of this paper is to review psychiatric manifestations, comorbidities, and psychopharmacological management in individuals with acute porphyria (AP).

RECENT FINDINGS

Recent literature begins to clarify associations between AP, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other psychopathology. Broad psychiatric symptoms have been associated to acute porphyria (AP) and correspond to a spectrum of heterogeneous manifestations such as anxiety, affective alterations, behavioral changes, personality, and psychotic symptoms. These symptoms may be difficult to identify as being related to porphyria since symptoms may arise at any time during the disease process. In addition, these patients may present psychiatric conditions secondary to the disease, such as adjustment disorder and substance use disorders. Timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment of psychiatric manifestations positively impact the course of the disease.

Acute Hepatic Porphyria

The porphyrias comprise a set of diseases, each representing an individual defect in one of the eight enzymes mediating the pathway of heme synthesis. The diseases are genetically distinct but have in common the overproduction of heme precursors. In the case of the acute (neurologic) porphyrias, the cause of symptoms appears to be overproduction of a neurotoxic precursor. For the cutaneous porphyrias, it is photosensitizing porphyrins. Some types have both acute and cutaneous manifestations. The clinical presentation of acute porphyria consists of abdominal pain, nausea, and occasionally seizures. Only a small minority of those who carry a mutation for acute porphyria have pain attacks. The triggers for an acute attack encompass certain medications and severely decreased caloric intake. The propensity of females to acute attacks has been linked to internal changes in ovarian physiology. Symptoms are accompanied by large increases in delta-aminolevulinic acid and porphobilinogen in plasma and urine. Treatment of an acute attack centers initially on pain relief and elimination of inducing factors such as medications; glucose is administered to reverse the fasting state. The only specific treatment is administration of intravenous hemin. An important goal of treatment is preventing progression of the symptoms to a neurological crisis. Patients who progress despite hemin administration have undergone liver transplantation with complete resolution of symptoms. A current issue is the unavailability of a rapid test for urine porphobilinogen in the urgent-care setting.

Physical illness and schizophrenia: a review of the literature

OBJECTIVE

The lifespan of people with schizophrenia is shortened compared to the general population. We reviewed the literature on comorbid physical diseases in schizophrenia to provide a basis for initiatives to fight this unacceptable situation.

METHOD

We searched MEDLINE (1966 - May 2006) combining the MeSH term of schizophrenia with the 23 MeSH terms of general physical disease categories to identify relevant epidemiological studies.

RESULTS

A total of 44 202 abstracts were screened. People with schizophrenia have higher prevalences of HIV infection and hepatitis, osteoporosis, altered pain sensitivity, sexual dysfunction, obstetric complications, cardiovascular diseases, overweight, diabetes, dental problems, and polydipsia than the general population. Rheumatoid arthritis and cancer may occur less frequently than in the general population. Eighty-six per cent of the studies came from industrialized countries limiting the generalizability of the findings.

CONCLUSION

The increased frequency of physical diseases in schizophrenia might be on account of factors related to schizophrenia and its treatment, but undoubtedly also results from the unsatisfactory organization of health services, from the attitudes of medical doctors, and the social stigma ascribed to the schizophrenic patients.

Anxiety and depression in the acute porphyrias

A previous study of self-rated psychosocial aspects in patients with acute porphyria found that depression, and particularly anxiety, is more common in porphyria patients than in the general population or general medical outpatient attenders. Nearly half of the sample (46%) reported at least some problem with anxiety and/or depression: anxiety caseness was 26% and depression caseness was 13%. This paper extends our previous observations and investigates further the associations between porphyria and anxiety, depression and general mental health in 90 patients (58 acute intermittent porphyria, 32 variegate porphyria). The findings of this study confirm that anxiety is raised in patients with acute intermittent porphyria and with variegate porphyria, in both males and females, compared to the normative population and, using a series of questionnaires exploring the physical and psychosocial features of anxiety, that this anxiety is experienced as a 'relatively stable personality trait', rather than a 'transitory emotional state' (i.e. intrinsic rather than secondary to the porphyria).