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Biomedical subjects

S E Ericksen

Publications and source records attributed to S E Ericksen.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1979

Recent advances in antidepressant drug treatment.

Psychiatric research has made remarkable advances in understanding the pathophysiology of depressive illnesses. Biologic depressions are now understood as neurotransmitter deficiency diseases. Certain forms of depression are treated with tricyclic antidepressant drugs, which increase the amount of available neurotransmitters. Complicating the clinical picture, however, is the problem of wide variability of levels of tricyclic drugs in the plasma of persons receiving the same dosage. Another problem is the apparent linear dose-response relationship of imipramine hydrochloride and its sister compound desipramine hydrochloride while amitriptyline and nortriptyline follow an inverted U-shaped dose-response curve. However, with newer, more sophisticated diagnostic methods, combined with monitoring of tricyclic drug levels in plasma, therapeutic efficacy can approach 90 percent. Available neurotransmitters also can be increased using monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors. Although MAO inhibitors have been less popular than the tricyclic drugs, recent clinical research tends to support their efficacy. Distinct individual differences in the rate of metabolism of MAO inhibitors have been found. New methods are being devised to detect these differences and monitor directly the effects of these drugs. One of these methods, platelet MAO inhibition, shows some clinical promise. Tricyclic drugs and MAO inhibitors have recently been joined by lithium carbonate, which shows notable efficacy in removing acute manic-depressive symptoms as well as preventing their return during maintenance treatment. Its utility in treating cyclic depressions without mania is now being explored by researchers.

Antidepressive Agents, Tricyclic↗
PubMed1977

Cholinergic influences in tardive dyskinesia.

The authors conducted placebo-controlled double-blind studies of physostigmine, choline, and deanol in 12 patients with tardive dyskinesia. Physostigmine and choline both had a positive therapeutic effect on tardive dyskinesia, but the authors note that interpretation of these results is not entirely clear because they found that the sedation effect of physostigmine may nonspecifically reduce the intensity of tardive dyskinesia symptoms. Deanol was not found to be effective in this group of patients; the authors suggest that this drug should not be assumed to be generally effective unless effectiveness is verified by a large placebo-controlled double-blind study.

Acetylcholine↗
PubMed1977

Electrophysiological (H-reflex) studies of patients with tardive dyskinesia.

The authors studied the H-reflex recovery curves of 31 schizophrenic patients with tardive dyskinesia in response to acute administrations of apomorphine, amphetamine, or physostigmine and compared them with curves of chronic schizophrenic patients without tardive dyskinesia and normal volunteers. Their most unexpected finding was the absence of an H-reflex in 9 of the 31 patients with tardive dyskinesia. They also found a relationship between severity of tardive dyskinesia and the value of the facilitatory peak Hchi: patients with more severe tardive dyskinesia symptoms had significantly higher values for Hchi.

Amphetamine↗