Oxidative Stress and the Level of Antioxidant Enzymes in Schizophrenia

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2012 in the subject Medicine - Neurology, Psychiatry, Addiction, grade: 10, Jawaharlal Nehru University (ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY), course: MD PSYCHIATRY, language: English, abstract: Schizophrenia is a clinical syndrome of variable, but profoundly disruptive, psychopathology that involves cognition, emotion, perception, and other aspects of behavior. The disorder usu-ally begins before age 25, persists throughout life, and affects persons of all social classes. In the United States, the lifetime prevalence of schizophrenia is about 1 percent, which means that about 1 person in 100 will develop schizophrenia during their lifetime. The prevalence of schizophrenia in India is 2.5/1000 as reported by Ganguli in 2000 and 2.7/1000 by Reddy et al. in 1998.

A growing body of evidence suggests that peripheral activities of antioxidant enzymes and lipid peroxidation are abnormal in schizophrenic subjects. Mahadik found increased lipid pe-roxidation products and altered defence system in both chronic and drug-naive first episode schizophrenics. The accumulated results indicate that oxidative stress is integral to this disease and not the result of neuroleptic treatment.