Glutamate Level’s in Blood Serum of Patients with Schisophrenic Spectrum and Bipolar Affective Disorder

The objective: the involvement of glutamatergic neurotransmitter systems in the pathogenesis of schizophrenic spectrum disorders and BD has been repeatedly proven. But today, there are no methods available to evaluate the glutamate metabolism in patients with mental disorders. The paper presents differences in the level of glutamate in the blood serum of patients with a schizophrenic spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder, and healthy individuals.

Patients and methods: the study included 224 people. 179 patients were presented with paranoid schizophrenia, simple schizophrenia, schizotypal disorder, acute polymorphic disorder, schizoaffective disorder and BD.

Results: in this work shows that the level of glutamate in patients in all studied groups is statistically significantly higher than in healthy individuals, except for acute polymorphic psychotic disorder. Serum glutamate concentration in patients with schizotypal disorder is 1.6 times higher than in healthy individuals. The significant differences in glutamate levels were detected in patients with schizotypal disorder and OCD (p = 0.045), and patients with paranoid schizophrenia (p = 0.012). The concentration of glutamate is also increased in patients with simple schizophrenia compared to patients with paranoid schizophrenia (p = 0.039). In addition, it was observed a glutamate increase in healthy individuals compared in patients with a continuous course of schizophrenia (p = 0.001), in patients with an episodic course with progressive deficit (p = 0.0211) and in patients with a schizophrenia duration of more than 12 years.

Conclusions: thus, the concentrations of glutamate in the blood serum of patients are depending on the severity of the course of schizophrenia and maybe an additional paraclinical criterion for the diagnosis of schizotypal disorder.

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