Research in schizophrenia

The Indian Journal of Psychiatry has come a long way from its humble beginning with the publication of its first volume in October 1958. The inaugural issue had three articles on schizophrenia, the first, an Editorial Annotation titled “Tranquillizers” by Dr. Kirpal Singh, which drew attention to the phenomenon of “market being flooding with numerous so called tranquillizers,” though Dr. Kirpal Singh observed even at that time that the efficacy of these and relative superiority of any one of these were questionable. He pondered over whether continued search for an “ideal” tranquillizer would yield fruitful results and whether it will be a boon or a curse! In the second article, Prof. S.M. Bose, Professor of Psychotherapy at Medical School, University of Zurich, Switzerland wrote on the topic of the role of psychotherapy in schizophrenia in which the author described his experience of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy in a case of schizophrenia as a case illustration and claimed achieving very good result with this approach. The third article was by A.K. Lalkaka, in which he described a case of schizophrenic reaction with peculiar visual disturbances.

Annotation of research in various aspects of schizophrenia published in the Dual Diagnosis: Open Access journal, since its inception, follows the above mentioned prelude. We have adopted a descriptive approach, describing the research published in our Journal and offer comments on the research efforts where appropriate.

Clinical observations rather than ‘trials’ were the main basis for guiding management of patients with schizophrenia. Catatonia was thought to be aggravated by Rauwolfia and/or Largactil.

An eight-week placebo controlled study of prochlorperazine carried out by Menon in 20 females with schizophrenia showed that 80% patients had variable response. Another trial in 30 chronic treatment resistant schizophrenic patients and five treatment resistant manic patients showed that thioproperazine was valuable in treating both sets of patients but had severe extra-pyramidal effects. Both the studies had small samples and no control groups. Another study also used quantitative measure of improvement. Towards the end of this decade of 1960s, comparative trials also surfaced, for example the drug trial of prochlorperazine versus chlorpromazine in a randomized fashion Narayana Murthy (1966) found no significant impairment in intellectual functioning or memory following ECT.

Various studies were reported in the Journal in search of biological markers and diagnostic tests in schizophrenia. Kondaiah et al. found that plasma Creatine Phosphokinase (CPK) levels were higher in the patients suggesting a diagnostic value of CPK. Ghosh et al. found that patients with schizophrenia excreted greater amount of Vanilmandelic Acid (VMA) and lower amounts of steroid fractions as compared to controls. Significantly lower levels of CSF 5-hydroxy indole acetic acid (5 HIAA) were found in patients as compared to controls by Pandey et a. and Tiwari et al.

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Regards,
Nancy Ella
Dual Diagnosis: Open Access
Email: dualdiagnosis@emedsci.com
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