Prophylactic Lithium in Recurrent Affective Disorders

The course and prognosis of manic-depressive psychosis: A quantitative analysis of episodes and intervals.

“…However, quantitative analysis on frequency of episodes will be required for the evaluation of prophylactic effect of drug (for example, Hullin et al 1972) or anticipation of prognosis. 63% reply to the mail questionnaire is fair.…”

The Lithium Ion: A Foundation for Psychopharmacological Specificity

“…Early placebo-controlled studies (Baastrup et al 1970;Coppen et al 1971;Cundall et al 1972;Dunner et al 1976;Fieve et al 1976;Hullin et al 1972;Prien et al 1973aPrien et al ,b, 1974Stallone et al 1973) corroborated that. The effectiveness for bipolar disorder prophylaxis is well documented in double-blind controlled trials, both for the manic and depressive phases of the disorder (Prien and Potter 1990;Price and Henninger 1994;Calabrese et al 1995).…”

“…The early controlled studies in bipolar patients found failure rates around 20 to 30%, over varied periods of time (Baastrup et al 1970;Coppen et al 1971;Cundall et al 1972;Hullin et al 1972;Prien et al 1973a;Stallone et al 1973). A review of several controlled studies from the 1960s and 1970s reported lithium to fail on average in 33% of cases (Prien 1988b).…”

PROCEEDINGS OF THE British Pharmacological Society

“…Lithium inhibition of pyruvate kinase has been previously reported (Kachman & Boyer, 1953) though the concentration used (100 mmol/l) was far in excess of the plasma level (0.6-1.4 mmol/l) obtained during treatment of recurrent affective disorder (Hullin, McDonald & Allsopp, 1972). The effects of lithium in the pharmacological dose range was therefore determined by the disappearance of NADH (estimated spectrophotometrically at 340 nm) in 3 ml aliquots of the test system: pyruvate kinase (0.66 mg/l), lactate dehydrogenase (13.32 mg/l), ADP (0.5 mmol/l), MgCl2 (1.5 mmol/l) and KCI (40 mmol/l).…”