[Sulpiride treatment of schizophrenics. Endocrine effects and aggressivity].

This work describes the results obtained with the use of a pharmaceutical product, sulpiride, whose effect is not yet completely known in the psychiatric field and which has precise indications in general medicine in the treatment of dizzy syndromes and for its strong antiemetic action. The drug was used by us in the treatment of schizophrenic criminals, in about 100 cases between 1973 and today. From the clinical point of view it was noted that the antipsychotic efficiency is a little difficult to forecast, while the resocializing action is more incisive. About the fifth day of treatment there is a "veering" characteristic of the clinical symptomatology which we related to a high and constant level of prolactinemy, which reaches its highest point on the fifth day. The implications concerning a probable hormonal substrate of the aggressiveness are very clearly revealed and can be considered together with those already known of the importance for control of the hypophysis-surrenal axis. At the same time it is necessary to point out the delicacy of the problem represented by the possibility of a modifying action from outside in relation to the general manifestations of behaviour; in the psychiatric field, in particular, without a contemporary influence of appreciable dimensions on the fundamental nucleus of the disease.