Study On The Levels Of Lipid Peroxide And Three Antioxidant Enzymes In First-episode Schizophrenic Patients

Objectives: Schizophrenia is a severe psychiatric disorder; its etiology andpathophysiology still remain elusive. In the last decades, dopamine hyperactivityhypothesis predominates in this field. Recently, many scholars devote themselves tostudy the relationship between oxidative stress and schizophrenia, more and moreconverging evidences show that oxidative mechanism may play an important role inschizophrenia. But most of these research studied only one or two antioxidantenzymes and their results were variant. In this research, we investigated the status ofoxidative and antioxidative system by quantifying the levels of MDA, SOD, CATand GSH-Px in blood, in order to find the function of oxidative stress in the etiologyof schizophrenia, seek new methods of treatment and improve prognosis.Methods: Forty first-episode schizophrenic patients were consecutivelyrecruited from the inpatients of the Department of Psychiatry, Tianjin AndingHospital. They all met CCMD-3 criteria for schizophrenia. 20 males and 20 femaleswere included, the average age was (33.35±10.19) years and the age was ranged from18 to 55 years. None of the patients had other psychiatric or somatic comorbidity. Theseverity of baseline psychiatric symptom was assessed with BPRS on the same day ofblood being taken. Fresh blood samples were collected to measure the levels of MDA,SOD, CAT and GSH-Px by the kits made in Nianjing Jiancheng BioengineeringInstitute. Forty heathy control subjects with no individual and familial history ofmental illness were recruited in this study. 22 males and 18 females were recruited.Their ages ranged from 23 to 54 years with mean age (34.48±7.82) years. Matchingbetween the patients and controls was done according to sex (X~2=0.201, P＞0.05) and age (t=0.554, P＞0.05). The same items of control subjects were examined by thesame methods simultaneously. Repeated the same assessment and examination onschizophrenic individuals after 12-week treatment. All data were statistically analyzedby SPSS 11.5. Test for normality was accomplished by Kolmogorov-Smirnov test.The data showed normal distributions were analyzed by t-test. Others were analyzedby Nonparametric tests. Independent-Samples t-test was used for the comparison ofbiochemical parameters between patient and control groups as well as typical andatypical antipsychotics groups. Paired-Samples t-test or Nonparametric tests was usedfor the comparison of BPRS and biochemical parameters before and after treatment.And Pearson correlation coefficients were used to determine whether the biochemicalparameters related to age as well as the change of biochemical parameters related toBPRS changing.Results: Pearson correlation analyses between biochemical parameters and ageindicated that MDA had positive correlation with age(P＜0.05), MDA had negativecorrelation with SOD(P＜0.05)in control group; SOD and age had positive correlationwith CAT(P＜0.05), MDA had negative correlation with GSH-Px(P＜0.01)in patientgroup. The average levels of MDA and CAT in patients were higher than that incontrol group(P＜0.01), while the average levels of SOD and GSH-Px were lower inpatients(P＜0.01). The concentrations of MDA and CAT after treatment were lowerthan that before treatment(P＜0.01)and the average levels of SOD and GSH-Px werehigher(P＜0.01). Pearson correlation analyses between the changes of biochemicalparameters and clinical symptoms indicated that the change of the score ofanxiety-depression factor and hostile-suspicion factor had positive correlation withthe change of MDA (P＜0.01; P＜0.05 separately), while the change of the score ofthink disorder factor had negative correlation with the change of GSH-Px (P＜0.05).In this study, no significant difference of the levels of these biochemical parameters (except GSH-Px) were observed between typical and atypical antipsychotics groups(P＞0.05).Conclusions: This study supported the hypothesis that there was free radicaldamage in schizophrenic patients. There was serious deregulation of oxidative andantioxidative metabolism system in schizophrenic patients and the schizophrenicpatients were exposed to oxidative stress. Both of increased free radicals anddecreased antioxidative capacity may be relevant to the pathophysiology ofschizophrenia. After the treatment by antipsychotics, the symptoms of patients wereallayed, oxidative stress was ameliorated. From this study we concluded that freeradical damage may play an important role in the etiology of schizophrenia, thereforeusing antioxidants might be an effective approach to partially alleviate or prevent thesymptoms of schizophrenia.