Significance Of Tyrosamine Level Of The Hair In Schizophrenia

PurposeSchizophrenia is a severe mental disorder, with or without organic damage, characterized by derangement of personality and loss of contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social functioning. The mechanism hasnt been made clear even now, because of no effective method to study microcosmic pathological changes in vivo. With the acceptance of dopamine theory, more and more research focuse on organic metabolism and biochemical determination.Tyrosamine content in the hair determined by GC/MS give some information about function, energy and integrality of brain cell. Its a convenient way in this field.Materials and Methods95 cases diagnosed as schizophrenia with positive symptom clinically were selected to perform tyrosamine determination by hair analysis. In the meantime, 90 healthy volunteers and 46 drug abusers were recruited as controls also underwent hair analysis. About 50 pieces of hair was cut from the occiput posterior, washed by 1 % SDS - distilled water - 95 % alcohol, weighted after natural drying, dissolved in alkali. Preparation of the hair was suitably carried out, so that tyrosamine of the hair can be detected by GC/MS.ResultsThe distribution of different tyrosamine levels shows patients with schizo-phrenia have more tyrosamine than healthy volunteers and drug abusers. There is significant difference of tyrosamine levels between patients with schizophrenia and normal persons.DiscussionIn order to get rid of the effects of bias, we only select the patient with schizophrenia positive symptoms to recover the relationship between tyramine level and the schizophrenia positive symptoms. The findings indicated the tyramine level of the schizophrenia positive symptom increases, and the tyramine level of hair can work as assistant index of diagnosis.ConclusionThere is significant difference of tyrosamine levels between patients with schizophrenia and normal persons. And the tyramine level of hair can work as assistant index of diagnosis.Tyrosamine levels of drug abusers have no significant difference between patients with schizophrenia and normal persons. External tyramine deposition to the hair is still not clear.