Susceptibility to infective respiratory diseases in depressed children. Epidemiological survey of 126 subjects, clinical-therapeutic report of 61 cases.
In an unselected consecutive series of 126 children, 1-15 years, seen in a paido-psychiatric outpatient service for various complaints, and in a large extent diagnosed as suffering from childhood depression, 61 of them (48.41%) presented, among other symptoms, a marked susceptibility to infective respiratory diseases. A pharmacotherapy carried out by means of GABAergic drugs (l-glutamine, pyridoxine and a benzodiazepine), besides improving both the alleged complaint and other symptoms of depression, made noticeable improvement or disappearance of this susceptibility in 40 out of the 42 subjects who came back for check-up. Susceptibility to infective respiratory diseases is believed due both to impairment of GABAergic mechanisms as first modulators of hypophysis secretion and adrenergic and cholinergic responses, and to a lack of l-glutamine as a donor of essential C atoms for the construction of proteins and nucleic acids.