Effect of Pineal Extracts on Blood Glutathione Level in Psychotic Patients

Abstract

THEFUNCTION of the pineal gland is not established; evidence bearing on this matter has been reviewed in another publication from this laboratory.1 The possibility that the pineal gland might influence metabolism in man has not been investigated extensively in the past, and it was therefore decided to make such a study here. Some negative findings were encountered; a constant positive finding was that the blood glutathione level changed during a course of injections of some pineal extracts. This was considered important since earlier work 2 had shown that the blood glutathione level is low in many patients with manic-depressive, involutional, or schizophrenic psychoses. A few observations on glucose tolerance were also made, in view of the belief currently held by some workers that glutathione influences carbohydrate metabolism. MATERIAL AND METHODSNine experiments were performed with four pineal extracts, designated in this laboratory as A, RPA-4, TRPA-4, and TSD-D; 40 experiments using 10 other types of extracts will not be discussed here, since their administration caused less significant changes or no change at all. Details of the preparation of these extracts will be presented in another paper. The patients given these extracts had manic-depressive (Cases F, G, H, I), involutional (Case E), or schizo¬ phrenic (Cases A, B, C, D) psychoses. They ranged in age from 25 to 68 years; three were women.The patients were given intramuscular injections every day or every other day; the volume injected was between 2.5 and 10 cc. each time. No fever, change in pulse rate or blood pressure, rise in blood leucocyte count or sedimentation rate, or fall in blood eosinophile count occurred during the course of the injections here reported.The methods of study used were those previously described for blood glutathione,2 blood sugar,3 and urinary 17-ketosteroids.4 Measurements of blood glutathione level were made two or three times a week; the number of measurements made in each patient ranged from 2 to 25 in the control period and from 4 to 13 during the administration of the extracts.

Our growing restlessness with problems of chronic schizophrenia.

“…Leach and Heath (1956) have suggested that the presence of the abnormal degradation product may be associated with psychotic behavior. Heath and Leach (1956) further suggest that the work of Altschule and his collaborators (Altschule, Siegel, Goncz, and Murnane, 1954), who found lowered glutathione levels in schizophrenics, may be a concomitant of the phenomenon which he observed. Glutathione can function as a reducing agent and should have the function of protecting adrenaline.…”

El legado neurofisiológico del cartesianismo: auge y caída del hombre-máquina

“…Más aún: la hipótesis mecánica también se utilizó para explicar, en la primera mitad del siglo XIX el papel de la glándula pineal en la convección del líquido cefalorraquídeo. De hecho, en el texto Mémoire physiologique sur le cerveu (1828) de François Magendie (1783-1855), se describe como el acueducto cerebral podía se abierto o cerrado por el órgano pineal, a modo de válvula (30). Y esta teoría se puede incluso leer en 1907, en la obra de Élie de Cyon (1842-1912), quien sigue hablando de la epífisis como válvula reguladora, a nivel del acueducto de Silvio, del movimiento del líquido cefalorraquídeo (31).…”

Role of Melatonin in Schizophrenia

“…Because the chemical isolation of MLT from pineal gland extracts took several years, early studies were carried out using extracts of pineal glands, mainly from bovine pineal glands [48]. Readily it was acknowledge that what was believed, that the pineal gland did not have a clearly defined function [49], was soon reformulated, and several researches started pointing out the MLT physiological mechanisms of action [48,50–53]. It soon became clear that there were two areas of research clearly delimited in psychiatry with respect to MLT.…”

“…Earlier works of Altschule et al . [48,88] reported that schizophrenic patients had low levels of glutathione, and the injections of pineal extracts corrected those deficits [48]. Based on the results of in vitro studies, in which MLT reduced by about 83% the enzymatic oxidation of dopamine (DA) and by about 35.7% the autoxidation of DA, Hartley and Smith [89] proposed that MLT may act as a free radical scavenger, thus slowing down the autoxidation rate.…”