Skerritt U M
St Ita's Hospital, Portrane, Co. Dublin, Republic of Ireland.
Acta Psychiatr Scand. 1998 Mar;97(3):228-32. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0447.1998.tb09992.x.
Controlled clinical trials in the UK have shown folate deficiency in psychiatric patients, and it has been suggested that such deficiency is most likely to occur among patients with affective disorders. Studies have led to the use of folate as an adjunct to therapy in such patients. The present paper describes a preliminary investigation into the red cell folate status of psychiatric patients in a general hospital unit compared with age- and sex-matched healthy controls, using up-to-date assays and strict entry criteria and overall improved methods on previous studies. The study showed that, although there is a trend for psychiatric patients to have lower serum folate levels than controls, there is no statistically significant difference in folate levels as measured by red cell folate, a more reliable measure of folate status, between healthy controls and psychiatric patients, and all but one of the patients had normal haematological indices.
英国的对照临床试验表明，精神科患者存在叶酸缺乏的情况，并且有人提出这种缺乏最有可能发生在情感障碍患者中。研究促使人们将叶酸用作这类患者治疗的辅助手段。本文描述了一项初步调查，该调查将一家综合医院病房的精神科患者的红细胞叶酸状况与年龄和性别匹配的健康对照者进行比较，采用了最新的检测方法、严格的纳入标准以及比以往研究总体上有所改进的方法。研究表明，尽管精神科患者的血清叶酸水平有低于对照组的趋势，但用红细胞叶酸（一种更可靠的叶酸状况衡量指标）测量时，健康对照者与精神科患者之间的叶酸水平没有统计学上的显著差异，而且除一名患者外，所有患者的血液学指标均正常。
