Serum Calcium in Schizophrenic Patients: A Comparative Analytical Study

Schizophrenia is a disabling brain disorder and the major contributors to the global burden of brain diseases. Recently, several studies have highlighted the alteration in serum Calcium (Ca) levels in schizophrenic patients; however, show a variety of results. Because of this recent heightened inter...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Indian journal of clinical biochemistry 2014-12, Vol.29 (S1), p.S131
Main Authors: Sharma, Santosh, Sood, Sadhna, Sharma, Atul, Gupta, I.D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Comparative analysis
Medical research
Medicine, Experimental
Physiological aspects
Schizophrenia
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Summary:Schizophrenia is a disabling brain disorder and the major contributors to the global burden of brain diseases. Recently, several studies have highlighted the alteration in serum Calcium (Ca) levels in schizophrenic patients; however, show a variety of results. Because of this recent heightened interest, variability in results and scarcity of documentation on this issue in Indian literature, we are inspired to undertake this study with objective to compare Serum Ca levels in patients having schizophrenia with the control group and find out the relationship between serum Ca and stage of disorder (acute and chronic) if any. The study was conducted in Department of Biochemistry and Psychiatric Centre at SMS Medical College, Jaipur. Two groups of 150 each participated in the study. Group 1: The diagnosed patients of schizophrenia. Diagnosis was confirmed by one senior consultant according to ICD-10 criteria. On the basis of duration, symptoms of illness and PANSS score' each of schizophrenic was further categorized as, in the Acute (n=79) and Chronic (n=71). Group 2: Age & sex matched 150 control subjects from general population. The estimation of serum Ca was carried out on a fully automated chemistry analyzer (OLYMPUS AU 400) by Arsenazo n method. 'P' Value < 0.05 was taken as significant. Serum Ca level was 8.94 [+ or -] 0.44 mg / dl in case group while it was 9.92 [+ or -] 0.42 mg/dl in control group. This difference was significant (P = 0.000). Ca level was found statistically significant (P = 0.028) between acute (9.01 [+ or -] 0.48 mg/dl) and chronic cases (8.85 [+ or -] 0.37 mg/dl). We conclude that there was significantly lower level of Ca which may be because of some changed metabolism of Ca in long duration schizophrenic patients by altering some hormonal axis or substantial change in diet. Ca supplementation may be beneficial.
ISSN:0970-1915