Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 28, Issue 11, 1 December 1990, Pages 959-966
Biological Psychiatry

Article
Vitamin C status in chronic schizophrenia

https://doi.org/10.1016/0006-3223(90)90061-6Get rights and content

Abstract

Schizophrenic patients on the same hospital diet as control group subjects had significantly lower levels of fasting plasma vitamin C (p < 0.05) and 6-hr urinary vitamin C excretion after an ascorbic acid load test (p < 0.01). After administration of 70 mg of ascorbic acid for 4 weeks there was no longer any difference in plasma vitamin C levels between schizophrenics and control group subjects, but the urinary vitamin C excretion after the vitamin C loading test remained significantly lower in schizophrenics (p < 0.05). The administration of 1 g ascorbic acid for 4 weeks, in addition to eliminating differences in the plasma vitamin C level, also increased the urinary vitamin C excretion of schizophrenic patients to the level of the control group subjects. The results of this study are in agreement with the hypothesis that schizophrenic patients require higher levels of vitamin C than the suggested optimal ascorbic acid requirement for healthy humans.

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    The levels of uric acid, albumin, and bilirubin have been reported to be significantly lower in the first-episode schizophrenic patients, and the lower antioxidant levels were independent of smoking status (Reddy et al., 2003; Yao et al., 1998c, 2000), which implicated the impaired antioxidant defense as an early pathophysiological change in schizophrenia and this change was not a sequela of drug effects, chronic disease, or smoking. In addition, serum levels of α-tocopherol (McCreadie et al., 1995) and plasma levels of ascorbic acid (Suboticanec et al., 1990) have also been reported to be decreased in schizophrenic patients. Recently, a novel oxidative stress marker thioredoxin (TRX), a small ubiquitous protein containing a redox-active disulfide/dithiol, has been investigated in first-episode and chronic patients with schizophrenia (Zhang et al., 2009).

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This research was supported in part by Scientific Council of Croatia, and Foundation for Nutritional Advancement, Washington.

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