antioxidant system / affective disorders

(doe) said:

<<snip>> antioxidant system is impaired during a mood
episode in patients with affective disorders <<snip>>

Int Clin Psychopharmacol. 2004 Mar;19(2):89-95. Related
Articles, Links

Antioxidant enzyme activities and oxidative stress in
affective disorders.

Erkan Ozcan M, Gulec M, Ozerol E, Polat R, Akyol O.

Departments of Psychiatry; Biochemistry, Inonu University
Medical School, Malatya, Turkey.

Recent data from several reports indicate that free
radicals are involved in the biochemical mechanisms
underlying neuropsychiatric disorders in human. The results
of several reports suggest that lower antioxidant defences
against lipid peroxidation exist in patients with
depression and that there is a therapeutic benefit from
antioxidant supplementation in unstable manic-depressive
patients. We investigated the antioxidant enzyme status and
the indices of oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation end
products in erythrocytes from patients with affective
disorder. For this purpose, we measured superoxide
dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and
catalase (CAT) activities, as well as malondialdehyde (MDA)
and nitric oxide (NO) levels in patients with affective
disorders (n=30) in both pre- and post-treatment periods,
and in a control group (n=21). CAT activities were
significantly decreased in both pre-, and post-treatment
periods in patients compared to the control group. GSH-Px
activity in the pre-treatment period in the patients was
significantly lower than both post-treatment patient and
control groups. MDA levels were increased in both pre-, and
post-treatment patient groups compared to the control
group. NO level was lower in the pre-treatment patient
group than in the control group. There were statistically
significant correlations between SOD and MDA, and SOD and
NO in the pre-treatment patient and control groups. Because
the overall study sample was small, and the post-treatment
patient group was even smaller, it can tentatively be
suggested that the antioxidant system is impaired during a
mood episode in patients with affective disorders,
normalizing at the end of the episode.

PMID: 15076017 [PubMed - in process]

Well, in 1985 I first suggested depression may result from
low DHEA. So, when I read your post, I immediately looked up
the connection, if any, of these enzymes with DHEA. Well,
guess what; this group has already looked at and found a
connection of DHEA with these enzymes. Now, they connect a
decline in these enzymes with depression. I was pleased.

James Michael Howard www.anthropogeny.com