Gather around and I shall tell you a tale ! A tale of a mistaken assumption that start a weird , long skill odyssey that include urine , steak , and guinea pigs , and terminate in a miracle drug .
Our narrative set about in 1859 , when a doctor list Alfred Garrod key out high uric acid levels in the blood of people smite with gout . Gout is an firing of the joints due to a ramp up - up of the uric acid that the organic structure utilize to digest certain solid food , mainly meat and alcohol . It was experience as the “ disease of queen , ” because it move fat people who could afford rich food .
Often doctors would dictate discourse like drinking hatful of sanitary wine-coloured , and staying in bed all day . Both of these exacerbate the stipulation instead of treating it , so Garrod ’s discovery was a big deal . People sleep together what they were fighting , and they get it on they could dissolve uric acid with lithium carbonate . The discussion was wonderful . It not only cleared up urarthritis , it also clear up two resultant symptom of urarthritis ; clinical depression and passion .
Eventually , gout dropped out of the equality , and uric Elvis itself came to be project as the case of cacoethes and impression . Lithium carbonate was used , on and off , to clear up these episodes . regrettably , atomic number 3 can be very unsafe if people ingest too much . Lithium carbonate treatments , though tried on and off to care for uric acid mania , were often abandoned when patients were overdose .
While we know that masses with bipolar disorder have been known to haveincreased uric acid during manic episodes , uric acid does n’t mechanically cause cacoethes . An injection of uric pane does put hoi polloi out of form , though , at least if the behavior of Numida meleagris copper is anything to go on . John Cade see this out in the 1940s , when he injected wop Sus scrofa with piss and observed their subsequent erratic behavior . A dead reckoning of lithium carbonate simmer down them down to the detail of lethargy , and Cade thought he ’d proved that uric acid does cause cacoethes .
Except none of the other uric pane solvents worked . Oh sure , they broke down the uric superman in the various animal subjects they were injected into , but they did n’t make the subject any more serene and sensible . Only atomic number 3 carbonate did . Cade do work out that he was doing the right thing using the incorrect assumption . Uric acid did n’t make mania , and dissolving it did n’t treat manic disorder . It was something in atomic number 3 that managed to care for the disease .
Lithium became an amazing drug , used to help showcase of bipolar disorder that otherwise would have been considered untreatable . As a drug , it has had a remarkably long animation . Although there are alternatives , it has n’t been discredit or replace . And while doctors have gotten much better at monitoring the amount of lithium a patient gets , we still do n’t entirely acknowledge why it works . The latest Revelation of Saint John the Divine , made in 2011 , is that Li seems to change the brain structure . People with untreated bipolar disorder had , compared to neurotypical people , increased mass in the right sidelong ventricular , left secular lobe , and correct putamen country of the brain , but decreased mass of the cerebrum and the hippocampus . Bipolar patients on lithium had dramatically increased volume in the cerebrum and hippocampus , so it ’s potential that lithium alters the proportions of the brain and that relieve the disorder .
[ reservoir : atomic number 3 : Discovered , Forgotten , and Rediscovered , Shrinks . ]
Guinea Pig Image : GDFL , Gout Image : Wellcome Images .
lithiumNeuroscienceScience
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