Low Serum Neuroleptic Levels Predict Relapse in Schizophrenic Patients

Neuroleptic discontinuation in the very stable schizophrenic patient: Relapse rates and serum neuroleptic levels

“…We were unable to confirm earlier observations that patients who eventually relapse have lower serum dopaminergic binding whilst on stable doses of neuroleptic (Brown et al, 1982), nor did our results show any relationship between relapse and change in neuroleptic levels after drug withdrawal (Wistedt et al, 1982) except for a general observation that relapses were more likely to occur after serum levels had started to drop. It is possible that this may have been due to the small number of patients in the study.…”

Methylphenidate Response, Psychopathology and Tardive Dyskinesia as Predictors of Relapse in Schizophrenia

“…The most promising of these are measures of central nervous system (CNS) dopamine (DA) activ ity including plasma prolactin levels (PRL) (Brown et al 1981;Zander et al 1981;Wistedt et al 1982;Lieber man et al 1986a), growth hormone response to DA agonist stimulation (Cleghorn et al 1983;Mueller Spahn et al 1984;Lieberman et al 1986), plasma neu roleptic levels (Brown et al 1982;Brown et al 1985;Marder et al 1987), pHV A (Davidson et al 1991) and behavioral response to DA agonist stimulation (van Kammen et al 1982;Davidson et al 1987;Lieberman et al 1987b;Angrist et al 1981). The latter line of inves tigation is based on the fi.nding originally demonstrated by Janowsky et al (1973) and Angrist et al (1980) that a single or brief administration of a DA agonist can in duce psychotic symptoms in schizophrenics in doses that would not induce psychosis in normal subjects (Lie berman et al 1987a).…”