Posted by bleauberry on August 29, 2008, at 22:08:34
It just makes me wonder why this wasn't further researched. Politics? Economics? Flawed methods? I dunno. I mean, a fair sample of people improved a good deal in these two studies. They were way back in the 1975 and 1977. Also of interest was the size of the doses. Geez, go into a health food store and you can't even get anything smaller than a 500mg dose. These studies were impressive with much smaller doses. It was interesting also how imipramine seemed to have the upper hand in early treatment, but low dose DLPA caught up to it. Anyway, just found it interesting. I've tried DLPA before and found it just made me tense, more depressed, and made my ears ring louder than they already do. But then, I was taking doses twice or three times the size of the ones in these studies.
To 23 subjects with endogenous depression after a previous unsuccessful treatment with common antidepressive drugs (imipramine-like or MAO inhibitors) dl- or d-phenylalanine was given in dialy oral doses of 50 or 100 mg during 15 days. A complete euthymia was obtained in 17 subjects between one and 13 days of treatment. No important adverse reaction was observed.
PMID: 1173765 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
In a double-blind study, DL-phenylalanine (150--200 mg/24 h) or imipramine (150--200 mg/24 h) was administered to 40 depressed patients (20 patients in each group) for 30 days. Diagnoses were established according to the International Classification of Disease (ICD). The AMP system, the Hamilton Depression Scale and the Bf-S self rating questionnaire (von Zerssen et al., 1974) were used to document psychopathological, neurologic, and somatic changes. Twenty-seven patients (14 on imipramine, 13 on phenylalanine) completed the 30-day trial. No statistical difference could be found between these two drug treatment groups (Student's t-test) using the Hamilton Depression Scale and the Bf-S self rating questionnaire. Ratings for anxiety were significantly lower in the imipramine group on days 10 and 20, but not on day 30; in addition, sleep disturbances were more influenced by imipramine on days 1, 5, and 10, but not on days 20 and 30. Separate analysis of psychopathological syndromes as somatic depressive syndrome and retarded depressive syndrome did not show a group difference (0.05 level of significance using a two-way analysis of variance). It is concluded that DL-phenylalanine might have substantial antidepresant properties. However, certain methodological considerations still warrant a careful interpretation.
PMID: 387000 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
poster:bleauberry
thread:849125
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080822/msgs/849125.html