Epinephrine and Arterenol (Norepinephrine) in Mental Disease

With improvements and advancements in methodology and precision instruments, the search for abnormal concentrations of various chemicals in patients with mental disorders has been intensified. A relationship of the sympatheticoadrenal system and endogenous epinephrine and arterenol (norepinephrine) to emotion and mental disease has been suggested by numerous investigators.¹⁻¹² Because of the repeated assertion that the reactivity of the sympatheticoadrenal system is altered in some mental disorders, quantitation of the plasma pressor amines seemed clearly indicated in certain psychiatric conditions. With the fluorometric method of Weil-Malherbe and Bone¹³and the modification devised in our laboratory,¹⁴it has been possible to quantitate epinephrine and arterenol in the plasma of normal subjects and psychiatric patients undergoing several forms of "stress" and treatment. In addition, the pressor amines in cerebrospinal fluid have been estimated in a variety of patients. From the analysis of plasma extracts by the method of paper chromatography