Dopamine: a marker of psychosis and final common driver of schizophrenia psychosis.

摘要

Our attempt to understand schizophrenia in neurochemical terms began with the landmark studies of Carlsson and Lindqvist (1) in the 1960s. The results of these studies, based on the action of chlorpromazine, were strengthened by the binding studies carried out in both Seeman's (2) and Synder's (3) laboratories, which showed that antipsy-chotic potency was correlated with dopamine D_2 receptor binding. The one major exception to this correlation is clozapine, which appears to be the most effective available drug for treating schizophrenia symptoms. The most recent version of the resulting dopamine hypothesis suggests that genetic, environmental, and developmental variables play major etiological roles in schizophrenia, but that striatal dopamine presynaptic overactivity remains the final trigger resulting in psychosis.