AMONG the most intractable symptoms of schizophrenia are those that are the most subtle, including social withdrawal, emotional flatness and apathy, which do not respond to most existing medications. But new studies are finding that very large doses of a form of glycine, a common amino acid, may offer relief from these "negative" symptoms....
Glycine, which appears to have only minor side effects, could one day offer an alternative to other medications that help with negative symptoms but have risky, potentially fatal, side effects.
But before such a glycine remedy for schizophrenia is possible, a synthetic form will have to be devised, one that penetrates the brain more effectively than does glycine in its natural form, researchers say.
In the study, 14 patients who had been hospitalized for schizophrenia on and off for 5 to 10 years were given very high doses of glycine. Those who took the glycine showed a marked improvement in negative symptoms, while a comparison group taking a placebo showed no improvement. The patients were evaluated by psychiatrists who did not know who was taking the glycine.
"We used extremely ill, chronic, deteriorated patients," said Dr. Stephen R. Zukin, a psychiatrist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, and a co-author of the study. "Most had schizophrenia for 15 to 20 years."
Withdrawal and Apathy