Basal and haloperidol-stimulated prolactin and symptoms of nonaffective and affective psychoses in neuroleptic-free men

The prolactin (PRL) response to 0.5 mg of intravenous haloperidol (HPL) IV may be a measure of tuberoinfundibular dopaminergic activity. Our earlier reports, using multidiagnostic strategies in schizophrenia, suggested that psychoses characterized by the absence of affective syndromes (Keks et al 1990) and the presence of thought disorder and passivity delusions (Keks et al 1992) are linked to blunted PRL responses. In this paper we evaluated the relationships between basal and HPL-stimulated PRL concentrations, and a number of potentially relevant symptom measures. Basal PRL was lower in patients without a depressive syndrome and suicidal ideation. Stimulated PRL was lower in patients without neurovegetative symptoms (versus patients with neurovegetative symptoms and controls), with depression (versus patients with no depression and controls) and those with disorder of associations (versus patients without association disturbance and controls). These findings can be interpreted as indicating a link between endocrine measures of dopaminergic function and a subtype of schizophrenic psychosis characterized by the presence of thinking disturbance in the absence of depression.