GLYCINE AND SCHIZOPHRENIA

Report #6318 9/9/94

A recent report in the August issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry shows that a simple protein building block called glycine may help treat schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia has two components: a thought disorder in which a person suffers from delusions, hallucinations and grossly inappropriate behavior and there is nothing you can do to change their beliefs, and a second component in which they have low motivation, little enjoyment and little emotional response characterized by flat facial expressions, poor eye contact and little or no speech.

Schizophrenics can have remissions from hallucinations and delusions, but they usually get no relief from the second component and are crippled by their sadness and lack of motivation. There is no effective long-term treatment for delusions, but this recent report shows that an amino acid protein building block called glycine can help to improve sadness and lack of motivation. This breakthrough came from the knowledge that angel dust or PCP can cause a serious exacerbation in schizophrenics when they appear to be doing well in remission. PCP blocks a part of brain cells called the NMDA receptor. The amino acid glycine stimulates the NMDA receptor, so scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine decided to see if it can be used to treat schizophrenia.

A major problem is that glycine cannot pass readily from the bloodstream into the spinal fluid, so it has to be taken in very large amounts, 60 grams a day. The average person's diet contains fewer than 2 grams a day. Glycine appears to be safe, but the researchers discourage people from buying glycine at health food stores because it will take around 120 pills a day to reach the recommended dose and long term side effects of such high doses are not known.

By Gabe Mirkin, M.D., for CBS Radio News