A preliminary double-blind controlled study on the prophylactic effect of carbamazepine on recurrent manic-depressive psychotics was conducted with 22 patients using an inert placebo in ten subjects as a control drug. Carbamazepine in the dosage of 200-600 mg was administered for 1 year. Among the 22 carbamazepine subjects, carbamazepine was found to be effective in 60% of the cases and inert placebo in 22.2% (U-test, P less than 0.10). It is suggested that carbamazepine is a useful drug for the prophylaxis of manic-depressive illness.

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Two-dimensional networks of spins are fascinating both for the study of low-dimensional magnetism and for the prospects in molecular quantum devices. Here we have fabricated a 2D supramolecular lattice consisting of manganese phthalocyanine (MnPc) on Ag(111). Lowtemperature scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations are applied to study the magnetic state and the electronic structure evolution from the isolated molecule to the fully 2D self-assembled molecular network. It is found that the magnetic Kondo resonance on the Mn ion is not affected by the increasing molecular 2D coordination, whereas an unusual extension of the Kondo resonance over the MnPc molecules provides additional evidence for the magnetic polarization of the ligand. Both STS and ab initio electronic structure calculations demonstrate the formation of an underscreened 2D Kondo lattice of MnPc molecules that are prone to long-range antiferromagnetic order. A checkerboard configuration of the molecular spin density is formed above the Ag(111) surface as a result of an indirect exchange interaction mediated by the silver substrate.

A multi-institutional double-blind study comparing the therapeutic effect of adjunctive carbamazepine and placebo with standard neuroleptic treatment was performed on 162 patients with DSM-III diagnosis of schizophrenic (n = 127) or schizoaffective disorders (n = 35) who had excited states or aggressive/violent behavior that responded unsatisfactorily to neuroleptic treatment. The patients participated in a 4-week trial of carbamazepine plus neuroleptics (n = 82) or placebo plus neuroleptics (n = 80). The sum of patients with marked and moderate improvement was modestly larger in the carbamazepine group (48 vs. 30%, P less than 0.05). There was no significant difference between the carbamazepine and placebo groups in the changes of total BPRS scores, although the carbamazepine group showed more improvement on the items suspiciousness, uncooperativeness and excitement. The results suggest that carbamazepine, when used in combination with neuroleptics, is a useful drug for the treatment of excited states of patients with schizophrenic and schizoaffective disorders.

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