Among the psychiatric patients, 60% of them suffer from schizophrenia. Psychopharmacological approach is the most important therapy for schizophrenic patients, however there is some limitation in psychotropic drugs usage. It is well known by now that hyperdopaminergic theory is the most reliable etiology of schizophrenia, but there is also another theory that hypofunction of GAEACy-aminobutyric acid) can be an etiology of schizophrenia. Therefore the author intend to prove clinical and biological changes by applying GABA agonist alprazolam augmentation therapy in schizophre- The subjects were 30 schizophrenic inpatients who met DSM-III-R criteria for schizophrenia. Symptom Checklist 90 Revised and positive & negative syndrome scale (PANSS) were used as clinical index ans 3 1/2 hours urine HVA level was used as biological index. These clinical and biological tests were performed before and after alprazolam augmentation therapy with at least 2 weeks interval. The differences between before and after alprazolam augmentation were as follow : 1) After alprazolam augmentation, anxiety scores, psychoticism score, and paranoid tendncy score of SCL-90-R were significantly reduced(P<0.05). Positive symptom scale socres of PANSS(p<0.01) and general psychopathy scale score(p〈0. 05) were significantly reduced. Negative symptom scale scores of PANSS were reduced but not statistacally significant. 2) Urine HVA levels were not significantly changed in the total patient group. But the urine HVA level in the higher HVA group (〉1.6mg/3.5hr) was significantly reduced(p<C0.05), and the urine HVA level in the lower HVA group(<Cl.6mg/3.5hr) was significantly increased(P〈0. 01). 3) The urine HVA(homovanillic acid) level before and after alprazolam augmentation treatment was not related to SCL-90-R and PANSS scores. 4) The results suggest that alprazolam seems to work on regulatory functions of dopamine as a physiologic buffer and GABA agonist is helpful in neuoleptic resistant schizophrenic patient
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