정신분열증환자의 혈장 Homovanillic Acid 농도와 치료반응과의 관계

The Relationship between Plasma Homovanillic Acid and Treatment Responses in Schizophrenics

In order to see whether the plasma homovanillic acid(HVA) levels can be adopted as a predictive biological marker reflecting therapeutic response of haloperidol, the authors measured HVA levels in 10 shchizophrenic patients and analyzed their relationship to therapeutic response. The measurement of plasma HVA level were carried out with high performance liquid chromatography(HPLC) before and after 7, 28days of treatment and the therapeutic responses were assessed with Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale(BPRS) before and after 28days of treatment. The results of this study were as follws. 1) Plasma HVA levels after 7 days of treatment were significantly increased as compared to baseline plasma HVA levels and plasma HVA levels after 28 days of treatment were significantly decreased compared to levels after 7 days of treatment. 2) Significant correlation was found between baseline plasma HVA levels and clinical improvement after 28 days of treatment. 3) There was significant correlation between increase in plasma HVA level after 7 days and clinical improvement after 28 days of treatment. But there was no significant correlations between decrement in plasma HVA level from 7 days to 28 days and clinical improvement after 28 days treatment. Hence theses observations have led us to propose that the early changes in plasma HVA levels are predictive of eventual treatment response