OBJECTIVE
To establish clinico-pathogenetic ratios of delusional psychoses constituting the psychopathological space of paranoid schizophrenia and to determine clinical and pathogenetic validity of concepts of a single delusional psychosis (a model of chronic delusion with a staged course) and two endogenous delusional psychoses.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
A sample consisted of 56 patients (19 women, 37 men; the average age 39.7±9.3 years; average duration of the disease 10.6±9.1 years) with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, continuous type of course (F20.00), developed at the age above 18 years. At the time of examination, the condition of the patients was determined by persistent delusional or hallucinatory delusional disorders. Clinical, pathopsychological, psychometric (SANS, SAPS, PANSS), immunological and statistical methods were used.
RESULTS
The study substantiates a bimodal model of a single delusional psychosis with a polar arrangement of interpretive delusions and delusions of influence based on the phenomena of mental automatism, both in terms of the vector of development (toward the poles of negative/positive disorders) and in terms of the rate of progression. Psychopathological manifestations of interpretive delusions correlate with the slow evolving development of psychosis, the dimensional structure of the paranoid is limited to the limits of the delusional register; functional activity is represented by affiliation to negative changes, integration with personality anomalies ends with the transformation of positive disorders into pathocharacterological ones, corresponding to the post-processual development of the personality. Manifestation of delusional impact (syndrome of mental automatism) is manifested by the complication and maximum expansion of the spectrum of positive disorders; the dimensional structure is represented by a wide range of psychopathological disorders and is formed with the participation of processes of mental dissociation, reaching the level of delusional depersonalization; functional activity is high, which creates conditions for the formation of a «new» subpsychotic structure, a «psychotic character», which is an attenuated duplicate of delusional psychosis. In both groups of patients, a significant increase in the activity of inflammatory markers of leukocyte elastase (249.2 ((231.1—270.0); 272.2 (236.0—292.6) nmol/min∙ml) and alpha — 1 proteinase inhibitor (48.8 (46.0—55.0); 50.4 (42.1—54.8) IU/ml) was shown compared with controls (205.0 (199.8—217.3) nmol/min∙mL and 33.0 (31.0—36.0) IU/mL, p<0.01, respectively). In the group of patients with delusions of influence, an increased level of antibodies to S-100B was also observed (0.88 (0.67—1.0) opt.density units) compared with the control values (0.7 (0.65—0.77) opt.density units, p<0.05).
CONCLUSION
The concept of the model is supported by the results of the immunological study, according to which interpretive delusions and delusion based on the mental automatism, indicates the different level of immunity tension, and a qualitative changes in immune reactivity (also due to different genetic burden).
