Patients with one or two DRD2 Taq1 A1 alleles had a greater risk of significant side effects, particularly if they were male, Caucasian, had a schizophrenic or delusional disorder or were taking strong dopamine D2-receptor antagonistic drugs.
(3) The genotype frequency of the DRD2 gene Ser311Cys was significantly higher in patients with persecution-type delusional disorder (21%), compared with schizophrenic patients (6%) or controls (6%).
One hundred and four inpatients affected by schizophrenia (n = 99) and delusional disorder (n = 5) (DSM IV) were assessed at admission by the Operational Criteria for Psychotic Illness (OPCRIT) and were typed for DRD2 variants using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques.
We investigated a variant of the dopamine D2 receptor gene (Ser311/Cys311 substitution) in Caucasian patients with schizophrenia (n = 273), delusional disorder (n = 62), bipolar I affective disorder (n = 63), and controls (n = 255).
Our results exclude that coding variants of the DRD4 exon 1 and 3 may play a major role in conferring susceptibility to major psychoses; moreover, we could not replicate the association of DRD4 exon 1 variant with delusional disorder.
Catalano et al reported an association between delusional disorder and the number of a 12-nucleotide (bp) repeat sequence in the first exon of dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4), which indicated a possible role of this polymorphism in the pathogenesis of psychotic disorders.
There were no significant differences in genotype frequencies between schizophrenics and controls: Our results strongly suggest the involvement of genetic variation in the DRD4 gene in conferring susceptibility to delusional disorder.
Correlation and regression analyses of quantitative clinical scores (by Positive And Negative Syndromes Scale - PANSS), together with background EEG spectral power values and four immunological parameters: enzymatic activity of leukocyte elastase and of alpha-1 proteinase inhibitor, as well as serum levels of autoantibodies to common myelin protein and to nerve growth factor, were performed in 50 patients (all females, aged 32.9±10.8 years) with hallucinatory-delusional disorders in the frames of attack-like paranoid schizophrenia.
Correlation and regression analyses of quantitative clinical scores (by Positive And Negative Syndromes Scale - PANSS), together with background EEG spectral power values and four immunological parameters: enzymatic activity of leukocyte elastase and of alpha-1 proteinase inhibitor, as well as serum levels of autoantibodies to common myelin protein and to nerve growth factor, were performed in 50 patients (all females, aged 32.9±10.8 years) with hallucinatory-delusional disorders in the frames of attack-like paranoid schizophrenia.
Correlation and regression analyses of quantitative clinical scores (by Positive And Negative Syndromes Scale - PANSS), together with background EEG spectral power values and four immunological parameters: enzymatic activity of leukocyte elastase and of alpha-1 proteinase inhibitor, as well as serum levels of autoantibodies to common myelin protein and to nerve growth factor, were performed in 50 patients (all females, aged 32.9±10.8 years) with hallucinatory-delusional disorders in the frames of attack-like paranoid schizophrenia.
We examined neuroleptic responses, plasma homovanillic acid (pHVA) and genes of the dopamine receptor (DR) and its synthesizing enzyme (tyrosine hydroxylase: TH) in patients with delusional disorder and compared them with those of schizophrenic patients and healthy controls.