Pitchot William, Reggers Jean, Pinto Emmanuel, Hansenne Michel, Ansseau Marc
Psychiatric Unit, CHU Sart Tilman, Liège, Belgium.
Neuropsychobiology. 2003;47(3):152-7. doi: 10.1159/000070585.
A large body of evidence suggests a potential role for catecholaminergic function as a possible biological factor in the control of suicidal behavior. Recently, we have used a neuroendocrine strategy to study dopaminergic and noradrenergic activities in depressed suicide attempters. However, some problems are associated with the use of growth hormone (GH) response to catecholaminergic challenge, because GH release could be decreased by a direct effect of corticosteroids at the pituitary level. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to assess GH response to both apomorphine, a dopaminergic agonist, and clonidine, an alpha2-adrenergic agonist, according to the dexamethasone suppression test (DST) status in a sample of 20 major depressed inpatients with a history of suicide attempt compared with nonattempters. Our results tended to show that hypercortisolemia as assessed by post-DST cortisol values did not inhibit GH response to apomorphine or clonidine, suggesting that hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis overactivity does not explain the impaired GH response to apomorphine in major depressed patients with a history of suicide attempt.
大量证据表明，儿茶酚胺能功能作为自杀行为控制中一个可能的生物学因素具有潜在作用。最近，我们采用神经内分泌策略研究了抑郁自杀未遂者的多巴胺能和去甲肾上腺素能活性。然而，使用生长激素（GH）对儿茶酚胺能刺激的反应存在一些问题，因为垂体水平的皮质类固醇直接作用可能会降低GH释放。因此，本研究的目的是根据地塞米松抑制试验（DST）状态，评估20名有自杀未遂史的重度抑郁住院患者与无自杀未遂史者对多巴胺能激动剂阿扑吗啡和α2-肾上腺素能激动剂可乐定的GH反应。我们的结果倾向于表明，通过DST后皮质醇值评估的高皮质醇血症并未抑制GH对阿扑吗啡或可乐定的反应，这表明下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺轴功能亢进并不能解释有自杀未遂史的重度抑郁患者对阿扑吗啡的GH反应受损。
