Biological Markers in DepressionMonoamine Metabolites in Urine of Depressed Patients and Normal Subjects

Abstract

Urinary elimination of HVA, MHPG and 5-HIAA was studied in 22 depressed inpatients before and after 28 days of antidepressant treatment. Mean values did not change significantly during treatment, and were not related significantly to recovery in patients. Some marked changes in urinary metabolite levels were, however, observed in individual patients, and could be related to changes in their depression. The direction of change in urinary monoamine metabolites during treatment was associated with pretreatment levels, in that high pretreatment values tended to decrease whereas low pretreatment levels tended to increase.

Clinical and biochemical responses to therapy in Alzheimer's disease and multi-infarct dementia

“…The central monoamine metabolism, measuring the neurotransmitter metabolites MHPG, HVA and 5-HIAA in the CSF (Raskind et al 1984;Redmond et al 1986) 3. The overall monoamine metabolism, analysing the excretion of the same three metabolites and also 3-methoxy-4-hydroxymandelic acid (VMA) in 24-h urine (Vandel et al 1985;Kopin 1985;Siever et al 1986) 4. The sympathetic nerve activity, by checking the changes of plasma noradrenatine (NA) level, as well as blood pressure (BP) and pulse rate (PR) in response to orthostatic challenge (Lake et al 1976).…”