Biomedical subjects
E Sacchetti
Publications and source records attributed to E Sacchetti.
Interepisode reliability of urinary MHPG excretion in major depression.
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Brain morphology in schizophrenia: a 2- to 5-year CT scan follow-up study.
In order to investigate whether structural brain changes in schizophrenia are static or progress in time, 17 schizophrenic patients were examined by computed tomography (CT) between 2 and 5 years after the initial scan. There was no change in cerebral ventricular size or degree of cortical atrophy over this period. The stability of CT scan measures of cerebral atrophy in individual schizophrenic patients confirms the hypothesis of the early appearance of structural brain abnormalities in schizophrenia as formulated in previous cross-sectional studies. Furthermore, the pathological process responsible for the CT finding of cortical or central atrophy does not seem to progress nor to reverse itself in young schizophrenic patients.
Combined measure of smooth pursuit eye movements and ventricle-brain ratio in schizophrenic disorders.
Smooth pursuit eye movements (SPEM) were examined in 67 schizophrenic patients and 101 control subjects. Our study confirms that eye tracking in schizophrenic patients is impaired compared to that in controls. The similar pattern of distribution of SPEM abnormalities in Italian patients as in ethnically different populations strengthens the hypothesis that these abnormalities may be a biological marker for schizophrenia. We also examined the relationship between SPEM abnormalities and the ventricle-brain ratio (VBR), which is also considered useful for differentiating schizophrenic subgroups. Our preliminary results indicate that there is an inverse correlation between abnormal SPEM performance and ventricular enlargement, suggesting that these abnormalities mark distinct subgroups of patients.
Early life events and affective disorder revisited.
The incidence of traumatic events during the first ten years of life was investigated in two groups of patients suffering from major affective disorder, as well as in mixed psychiatric patients and in healthy subjects. While there were no significant differences between the two groups of affective patients or between the two control groups, the incidence of subjects who underwent such trauma was significantly higher in depressives, compared with controls. These differences are small and are further reduced if events secondary to psychiatric disturbances of family members are excluded.
Platelet alpha 2-adrenoceptors in major depression: relationship with urinary 4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenylglycol and age at onset.
Platelet alpha 2-adrenoceptor number and affinity were measured in 31 drug-free patients with major depressive illness utilizing 3H-clonidine as ligand. A significant negative correlation was found between number of alpha 2-adrenoceptors, baseline urinary 4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenylglycol (MHPG) excretion, present age and age at onset of the disease. Kd did not correlate with any of these variables not with the Bmax of platelet alpha 2-adrenergic binding. Multiple regression analysis, with MHPG and age at onset as independent variables, explained variance for alpha 2-adrenoceptor density better than single regression (from 19% for MHPG and 30% for age at onset to 40%), with the addition of both these variables being significant.
Life events and headache.
We have evaluated the incidence and the gravity of recent and early stressful life events in 149 patients with headache and in 43 healthy controls. The incidence of early stressful events was the same for the headache patients and the controls, and for the three subtypes of headache patients. Patients with headache had undergone more recent stressful events than the control individuals, and the difference was due to patients with migraine. The mean gravity of the recent stressful events did not differ significantly. This probably indicates that appearance of headache is not so much associated with the gravity of the events as with the fact that they have occurred in the lives of patients with other biological and/or psychological characteristics with which the stress interacts.
Neuroendocrine abnormalities in depressive illness.
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Is urinary MHPG a real predictor of drug response in primary depression?
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beta-Endorphin and beta-lipotropin plasma levels in chronic schizophrenia, primary affective disorders and secondary affective disorders.
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Psychotropic drugs and their relationship with psychopathology of affective disorders.
UNLABELLED: In this paper we discuss the relationship between the psychopathology of depressive behavior and the effectiveness of drugs affecting mood. Particular emphasis is given to the recent contribution of the authors (1975-1977) to the specific items of: 1. non-psychological validation of diagnosis of primary affective disorders 2. predictability of the response to antidepressant drugs 3. factors involved in the effectiveness of long-term lithium treatment. Key words: depression, primary affective disorders, secondary affective disorders, unipolar depression, bipolar depression, N1-methylnicotinamide, 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylglycol, tricyclic antidepressant drugs, lithium prophylaxis, intraerythrocyte/plasma lithium ratio. ABBREVIATIONS: Cerebral spinal fluid (CSF); intraerythrocyte/plasma lithium ratio (Li ratio); 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylglycol (MHPG): monoamine oxidase (MAO); morbidity risk (MR); N1-methylnicotinamide (N1-MN); norepinephrine (NE); primary affective disorders (PAD); secondary affective disorders (SAD).
3-Methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylglycol and primary depression: clinical and pharmacological considerations.
Pretherapeutic urinary excretion of 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylglycol (MHPG) was studied in 25 primary depressed patients. The results indicate that: (i) There exists a wide variability among primary depressives with respect to MHPG excretion. (ii) Age of onset together with polarity of the disease may account for the nonhomogeneous division of the patients according to MHPG levels. (iii). The other variables considered, with the possible exception of motor activity, do not explain the dichotomy between high or normal and low MHPG levels, even though it is possible that they influence MHPG excretion to some extent, with the consequent possibility of errors in subclassification of the patients at the boundaries between the two groups. (iv) The correlation between motor retardation and low MHPG excretion is positive, but probably due to a frequent association between this motricity state and primary depression of bipolar early onset type. (v) Treatments with chlorimipramine and, to a lesser degree of specificity, with amitriptyline are particularly indicated in patients with normal or high MHPG. Some practical and theoretical implications deriving from these data are briefly discussed.
Deranged anterior pituitary responsiveness to hypothalamic hormones in depressed patients.
Abnormal anterior pituitary (AP) responsiveness to acute administration of thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) and luteinizing hormone-follicle stimulating hormone-releasing hormone (LH-RH) was investigated in 14 patients (two men and 12 women) suffering from primary affective disorders. In ten, TRH, 500 microgram given intravenously, induced a rise in plasma growth hormone (GH) level, while in eight patients it induced a rise in plasma levels of FSH or LH or both. When LH-RH, 150 microgram was administered intravenously to ten patients, it induced a rise in plasma GH level in one patient and increased plasma prolactin level in three patients. Collectively, in only three of 14 patients was conventional AP responsiveness to hypothalamic neurohormones present. These findings demonstrate the existence of a profound derangement of AP responsiveness to hypothalamic neurohormones in depressed patients and suggest that a primary alteration in the physiologic links between the central nervous system and the AP may be at the origin of the neuroendocrine disturbance.
HLA typing and affective disorders: a study in the Italian population.
HLA phenotype distribution was investigated in 91 affective patients. Significant increases over those of the control population were found in HLA-A 29 and in Bw 22 frequencies, while A 10 and A 30 were decreased. No significant difference was shown between the two clinical subgroups (41 unipolar patients and 50 bipolar ones). On comparing our data with those from other authors, Bw 16 was significantly increased. However, a high degree of heterogeneity was also shown for this antigen. Of some interest is the finding that relapsed and non-relapsed patients during long-term lithium therapy display diverging HLA phenotype distributions, with B 5 increased among the non-relapsed subjects.
Noxiptylin and masked depression.
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Plasma and intracellular kinetics of lithium after oral administration of various lithium salts.
Five healthy volunteers were treated orally with lithium carbonate, sulphate, or chloride. There were no significant differences in area under time-concentration curves, half-lives, total body clearance or apparent distribution volumes between the various salts, either in plasma or in the RBC compartment. The carbonate salt did show a higher RBC/plasma distribution ratio than the other salts, which might possibly imply greater therapeutic effectiveness of this salt. Some considerations on the tolerability of various lithium salts are discussed.
Erythrocyte/plasma lithium ratios.
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Interference between anti-HLA antibodies and adrenergic receptor-binding drugs.
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