Body Fluid Indoles of Normal and Mentally-Ill Subjects

Abstract

A role in mental illness for an aberrant metabolism of indole compounds was first advanced some sixty years ago, when their alleged toxicity to the nervous system figured prominently in the then current theory of auto-intoxication by bacterial action in the bowel (Herter, 1898, 1907). Although in a modified form it continues to receive the support of Buscaino (1958), auto-intoxication of this nature is now generally rejected as a factor in mental illness (see particularly Alvarez, 1924) and the renewed interest in indoles and brain function of recent years has come from a different standpoint. Thus, study of the central nervous system effects of indoles such as 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin) and bufotenin, and of compounds containing an indole group such as lysergic acid and reserpine, has inspired several new theories concerning normal and abnormal roles for indoles in the brain (Woolley and Shaw, 1957; Brodie and Shore, 1957; Hoffer, 1957).