[Alcohol withdrawal syndrome showing various progress: A case report].

We experienced a case showing various psychotic symptoms following cessation of alcohol consumption. The symptoms included depressive state, delusion, confusion, psychomotor excitement and delirium, all of which disappeared in about two months. At first, we regarded all the symptoms as alcoholic hallucinosis, by a clinical standpoint, in spite of no auditory hallucination in this case. However, taking the overall clinical course into consideration, withdrawal syndrome could have been affected by some factors. One of the possibilities is that delusion might have been induced by aripiprazole. There still may be some other unknown influential factors on withdrawal, which are indicated by previous papers.

Evidence for oxidative stress in the frontal cortex in patients with recurrent depressive disorder--a postmortem study.

Prefrontal cortical (PFC) and hippocampal (HI) volume reductions have been consistently found in patients with recurrent depressive disorder (DD). Here we examine the possibility that oxidative stress, widely implicated in neuronal cell damage, may contribute to these brain structural changes. We compared manganese (Mn) and copper/zinc (Cu/Zn) superoxide dismutase (SOD) coenzyme concentrations in postmortem PFC and hippocampal brain tissue from 7 patients with DD and 7 neuropsychiatrically healthy controls using sandwich-type enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technique. The concentration of Cu/Zn-SOD was significantly increased in the PFC but not in the hippocampus of patients. There was no significant change in Mn-SOD enzyme concentration in either region. Our findings contribute to the growing body of evidence implicating oxidative stress in the pathophysiology of depressive disorder.

Individual difference in the pharmacokinetics of a drug, pravastatin, in healthy subjects.

The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether there were individual pharmacokinetic differences of a drug, pravastatin. Furthermore, the percentage of subjects who showed pharmacokinetic differences was determined. A single oral dose of pravastatin 10 mg was administered to 84 Japanese healthy male subjects. Serum concentrations of pravastatin were measured for 8 hours postdose. Area under the concentration-time curve (AUC) and peak concentration (Cmax) were determined as primary evaluation parameters. An outlier was defined as follows: Outlier 1 < Q1 - (Q3 - Q1) x 1.5 or Q3+(Q3-Q1) x 1.5 < Outlier 1, Outlier 2 < Q1 - (Q3 - Q1) x 3 or Q3+ (Q3-Q1) x 3 < Outlier 2. Subjects who were outliers were regarded as having an individual difference in pharmacokinetic behavior. In AUC and Cmax, 4 of 84 subjects (4.8%) were higher outliers. Of these 4 subjects, 2 were high outliers in both AUC and Cmax. No subjects were low outliers. It was concluded that a significant individual difference in the pharmacokinetics of pravastatin was observed in 4.8% of the subjects (4/84).