Am J Psychiatry 1981; 138:1493-1496
Copyright © 1981 by American Psychiatric Association
Serum prolactin and tardive dyskinesia
WM Glazer, DC Moore, MD Bowers Jr and WA Brown
The authors correlated the serum prolactin levels of 19 men with tardive
dyskinesia, 29 postmenopausal women with tardive dyskinesia, and 21 men
without tardive dyskinesia with the variables age, sex, antipsychotic
dosage, and severity of illness. All subjects were taking antipsychotic
medication. The prolactin levels of the 14 women with severe tardive
dyskinesia were significantly higher than those of the 15 women with mild
symptoms. The prolactin levels of the 8 men with severe tardive dyskinesia
did not differ from those of the 11 men with mild symptoms. The authors
discuss the sex-related association between prolactin and severity of
tardive dyskinesia in the context of recent animal studies that have
examined the effect of prolactin and estrogens on the striatum.
