Possible drug-drug interaction between pregabalin and clozapine in patients with schizophrenia: clinical perspectives.

Introduction: Pregabalin is an antiepileptic drug with anti-anxiety properties and is approved for treatment of generalized anxiety disorder. Anxiety is common in patients with schizophrenia and pregabalin has been suggested as an off-label add-on treatment.

Methods: Pregabalin was added to clozapine in 2 patients with schizophrenia, who both suffered from severe anxiety symptoms.

Hematological clozapine monitoring with a point-of-care device: a randomized cross-over trial.

Clozapine remains the drug of choice for patients with treatment-resistant schizophrenia, who show a response rate of about 50% despite their unresponsiveness to other antipsychotics. Although treatment with clozapine can lead to considerable savings on bed days, the drug is underutilized for several reasons, perhaps most importantly because of the mandatory hematological monitoring. The Chempaq Express Blood Counter (Chempaq XBC) is a point-of-care device providing counts of white blood cells (WBC) and granulocytes based on a capillary blood sampling.

[Quetiapine-induced leucopenia].

We describe the case of a 20-year-old man with schizophrenia who was treated with the dibenzothiazepine antipsychotic drug quetiapine in oral doses of 900 mg daily. At admission the patient had a normal blood count. 15 weeks after initiation of treatment asymptomatic cytopenia was discovered with leucocytes of 2.

Monoclonal antibodies against human angiotensinogen, their characterization and use in an angiotensinogen enzyme linked immunosorbent assay.

Monoclonal antibodies were produced against human angiotensinogen. An enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was developed using a high affinity monoclonal antibody as catching antibody and a polyclonal rabbit anti human angiotensinogen antibody as detecting antibody in a "sandwich" ELISA. Linear range of the ELISA was 15-450 pmol/l of human angiotensinogen.

Listeria monocytogenes meningitis in adults. Sixteen consecutive cases 1973-1982.

16 adult patients with Listeria monocytogenes meningitis were reviewed to see whether clinical features or initial laboratory findings could discriminate between these patients and patients with purulent meningitis of other causes. Six patients suffered from known predisposing diseases and 4 were alcoholics. The initial clinical picture was indistinguishable from meningitis of other causes.

Renin in the mouse submaxillary gland has a molecular weight of 40,000.

The availability of pure submaximillary renin, its antibody and pure specific immunoreactive Fab fragments of the antirenin molecule were used in an attempt to detect in which form renin is stored in the submaxillary gland. The proteolytic activity of serine-, metallo- and sulfhydryl enzymes during homogenisation was inhibited, but no inactive or high molecular weight form could be detected enzymatically or antigenically after gelfiltration. Nor were they demonstrable in crossed immuno-electrophoresis by using antibodies elicited against pure renin.

Is high-molecular-weight-renin binding of renin to the protease inhibitors and lipoproteins?

1. Two high-molecular-weight forms of renin (molecular weights 800 000 and 70 000) are present in mouse plasma. 2.