Phosphomonoesters and Phosphodiesters in the Brains of Schizophrenic Patients-Reply

In Reply. —  Brown raises a very in- teresting point; that is, do the brain PME and PDE levels in schizophrenic patients correlate with the clinical subtype? In our preliminary report,¹ there were five paranoid and six undifferentiated schizophrenic patients.There were no significant differences in PME and PDE levels (mean± SD) among the control(PME, 20.25±2.97 mol %; PDE, 32.20±1.96. mol %), paranoid (PME, 14.77±2.28 mol %; PDE,38.52±5,58 mol %), and undifferentiated (PME, 16.05±3.49 mol %; PDE, 34.70±4.06 mol %) schizophrenic patients in this small sample, although the PDE levels were higher and PME levels lower in the paranoid patients. Perhaps with a larger sample, a difference between paranoid and undifferentiated patients will be observed.A more likely explanation for the difference between the PME and PDE findings in our preliminary study and those reported by Williamson et al² is that our patients were "first-break, never-medicated" and those studied by Williamson et al were patients