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Effects of pharmacological doses of 2-deoxyglucose on plasma catecholamines and glucose levels in patients with schizophrenia

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Abstract

Rationale

Several lines of evidence suggest that the pathophysiology of schizophrenia may be associated with altered noradrenergic and glucoregulatory function.

Objective

The aim of this study was to investigate these alterations during a perturbed homeostatic state.

Methods

Fifteen patients with schizophrenia and 13 healthy individuals were given a glucose deprivation challenge through administration of pharmacological doses of 2-deoxyglucose (2DG; 40 mg/kg), and their plasma was assayed over the next 60 min for concentrations of norepinephrine (NE), the intraneuronal NE metabolite dihydroxyphenylglycol (DHPG), epinephrine and glucose.

Results

2DG induced significant increases in plasma NE, epinephrine and glucose levels in both groups with significantly greater NE and glucose increments in patients than in controls. For DHPG, 2DG produced increases in patients and decreases in the control subjects. NE responses correlated positively and significantly with the DHPG and glucose responses in schizophrenics, but not in controls.

Conclusions

These findings suggest that patients with schizophrenia have exaggerated NE and glucose responses to an acute metabolic perturbation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Tammie Logan for the performance of the catecholamine assays, Christopher Bir for his help with the conduct of this study, the nursing staff of 4 East Clinical Care Unit, NIH, for the excellent care of the research subjects and Christine Melin for her help with the preparation of the manuscript. These experiments comply with the current laws of the United States of America, the country in which they were performed. All human studies have been approved by the appropriate ethics committee and have therefore been performed in accordance with the ethics standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. This research was supported by grants to IE from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA#14410) and the National Alliance on Research in Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders and to SEL from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA#00343).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, 115 Mill Street, Belmont, MA 02478, USA

    Igor Elman & Scott E. Lukas

  2. Medstar Cardiovascular Research Institute, Washington, DC, USA

    David Rott

  3. Department of Psychiatry, Dartmouth Medical School, Concord, NH, USA

    Alan I. Green

  4. Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Daniel D. Langleben

  5. National Institute on Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Bethesda, MD, USA

    David S. Goldstein

  6. Lilly Research Laboratories, Indianapolis, IN, USA

    Alan Breier

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  1. Igor Elman
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  2. David Rott
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  3. Alan I. Green
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  4. Daniel D. Langleben
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  6. David S. Goldstein
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  7. Alan Breier
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Correspondence to Igor Elman.

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Elman, I., Rott, D., Green, A.I. et al. Effects of pharmacological doses of 2-deoxyglucose on plasma catecholamines and glucose levels in patients with schizophrenia. Psychopharmacology 176, 369–375 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-004-1890-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-004-1890-y

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