Behavioral and EEG Changes Induced by Injection of Schizophrenic Urine Extract

Introduction  The present growth of interest in biological studies in psychiatry has been accelerated by a rapidly increasing body of knowledge concerning (1) the psychotherapeutic action of reserpine and chlorpromazine, and (2) psychotomimetic action of so-called hallucinogenic agents, such as lysergic acid and mescaline.The recognition of a common denominator among these agents—an activated aromatic ring²⁹—and the presence of a number of independent reports in the literature concerning the abnormally high concentration of various aromatic derivatives in the schizophrenic body fluids^24,25 led McGeer et al. to suspect the possible significance of aromatic metabolism in schizophrenia.On the basis of the one-dimensional chromatographic analysis of several hundred schizophrenic and nonschizophrenic subjects, they found that the patients with acute schizophrenia generally excreted more aromatic compounds than did the nonschizophrenics. Further analysis with extracts of urine pools from groups of schizophrenic as against nonschizophrenic subjects indicated that there are several