Abstract
Background: Psychiatrists started using urine pyrroles (hydroxyhemopyrrolin-2-one, HPL) to diagnose psychiatric disorders many years ago. The biological origins of HPL are not known, nor are the causes of elevated urinary pyrrole excretion well understood. Methods: In the present study we analyzed the level of pyrroles in 148 patients with schizophrenia, 135 patients with bipolar disorder, 97 patients with depression, 119 patients with ADHD and compared these data with the results of pyrrole tests for patients with non-psychiatric conditions and healthy volunteers. Results: According to our data, urinary pyrrole concentrations tended to be high in patients with psychiatric disorders, but elevated level of pyrroles was not specific for only these patients. We found evidence of an allergy related component in the fact that elevated pyrrole levels were significantly more prevalent in subjects with elevated histamine values. A role of intestinal bacteria, or imbalances in intestinal bacterial metabolism, was also suggested based on the found relationship between elevated pyrrole levels and elevations in indicans and urobilinogens. In addition, our data demonstrated that subjects with severely elevated pyrrole levels were deficient in nutrients such as zinc, vitamin B3, and vitamin C. Conclusion: Thus, pyrrole excretion seems to be a component of illness in general and not strictly psychiatric disorders.
Highlights
Interest in pyrroles as markers of psychiatric disorders started Dr Abram Hoffer’s discovery that “Mauve Factor”, a pyrrole named for its lavender appearance in urine chromatograms stained with Ehrlich’s reagent [1], was prominent in urine samples from schizophrenics [2, 3]
Hoffer claimed that HPL tended to decrease when a patient recovered from illness, and increased when illness reappeared; treatments with vitamin B6 and zinc were reported to decrease HPL levels and were associated with patient recovery [11]. Those with interests in orthomolecular medicine, have used HPL as a clinical tool for diagnosing and following the progression or remission of mental illness [11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. Data from these studies suggest that roughly one-third of schizophrenia patients tested had elevated pyrroles, but high urine HPL levels were not limited to schizophrenia, as a variety of conditions and stresses were associated with urine pyrrole excretion
We investigated these elevated pyrroles further, finding that nearly half of the patients diagnosed with ADHD had pyrrole concentrations above the normal limit (20 ug/dL) in urine
Summary
Interest in pyrroles as markers of psychiatric disorders started Dr Abram Hoffer’s discovery that “Mauve Factor”, a pyrrole named for its lavender appearance in urine chromatograms stained with Ehrlich’s reagent [1], was prominent in urine samples from schizophrenics [2, 3]. Hoffer claimed that HPL tended to decrease when a patient recovered from illness, and increased when illness reappeared; treatments with vitamin B6 and zinc were reported to decrease HPL levels and were associated with patient recovery [11] Some psychiatrists, those with interests in orthomolecular medicine, have used HPL as a clinical tool for diagnosing and following the progression or remission of mental illness [11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. The biological origins of HPL are not known, nor are the causes of elevated urinary pyrrole excretion well understood
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