OBJECTIVE Catatonia is a psychomotor syndrome characterized by concomitant emotional, behavioural and motor symptoms. In many cases clinical symptoms disappear almost immediately with administration of lorazepam, which acts on GABA(A) receptors. METHODS Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) we investigated prefrontal activation patterns during emotion processing in catatonic pati...

The effects of the oral administration of diazepam 5, 10 and 20 mg, flunitrazepam 0.5 and 1 mg and lorazepam 1, 2 and 4 mg on memory were studied in groups of healthy patients before surgery. The degree of sedation was noted also. A dose-related amnesic effect was produced by all the drugs, but this was not significant with diazepam 5 mg and lorazepam 1 mg. Larger doses of diazepam (10 and 20 m...

Various α(2,3) subtype selective partial GABA-A agonists are in development to treat anxiety disorders. These compounds are expected to be anxiolytic with fewer undesirable side effects, compared to nonselective GABA-A agonists like benzodiazepines. Several α(2,3) subtype selective and nonselective GABA-A agonists have been examined in healthy volunteers, using a battery addressing different br...

Pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles of lorazepam and valproate were analyzed according to uridine 5'-diphosphate-glucuronosyltransferase (UGT)2B7 genotype in 14 healthy subjects with UGT2B15*2/*2 genotype. Systemic clearance of lorazepam (2 mg intravenously) and area under the concentration-time curve (AUC) of valproate (600 mg once daily for 4 days) were analyzed as pharmacokinetic pa...

BACKGROUND Benzodiazepines (BZDs), the most commonly prescribed psychotropic drugs with anxiolytic action, may cause hyposalivation. It has been previously shown that BZDs can cause hypertrophy and decrease the acini cell number. In this study, we investigated the effects of BZDs and pilocarpine on rat parotid glands, specifically on acinar, ductal, and myoepithelial cells. METHODS Ninety mal...

Catatonia has been described in children with intellectual disabilities (IDs). These are the first three published cases of catatonia in adults older than 50 years of age with IDs. They were followed using the KANNER scale and, in one case, creatinine phosphokinase (CPK) monitoring. Case 1 is a 67-year-old Caucasian who probably had been having intermittent episodes of undiagnosed catatonia wit...

In a placebo-controlled, double-blind study, we measured the effects of low dose lorazepam on attentional and motor factors involved in saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements. We manipulated the temporal interval between the extinction of the central fixation target and the appearance of a second eccentric target (gap/overlap step paradigm). The second target was either stationary (saccade t...

The index case belongs to the second category. Psychiatric illness is not a feature of men who commit filicide. In contrast, a link between maternal mental illness and filicide especially of young child has been reported (D' Orban, 1979; Marks and Kumar, 1993). Most parents show psychiatric symptoms prior to act of filicide. The guilt of killing one's own child and the hostile feelings towards ...