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Tyrosine hydroxylase immunoreactivity in the locus coeruleus is elevated in violent suicidal depressive patients

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Abstract

Our postmortem study aimed to determine the impact of suicide on the number of noradrenergic neurons of the locus coeruleus (LC) in suicidal depressive patients. Noradrenergic neurons were shown by immunostaining tyrosine hydroxylase in the LC of 22 non-elderly patients with mood disorders compared to 21 age- and sex-matched normal controls. Eleven patients were suicide victims and the other eleven died of natural causes. Seven violent suicide victims revealed an increased number of tyrosine hydroxylase immunoreactive (TH-ir) neurons compared with non-violent suicide victims and controls. No difference was found between the number of TH-ir neurons in all suicidal patients and controls and between non-suicidal patients and controls. The differences of TH-immunoreactivity could neither be attributed to medication nor to the polarity of depressive disorder (unipolar/bipolar). The numbers of TH-ir neurons in suicidal patients correlated negatively with the mean doses of antidepressants. The study suggested a presynaptic noradrenergic dysregulation in the LC related to the level of self-aggression. Traditional antidepressants may, therefore, regulate noradrenergic activity of the LC in suicide patients, however, without demonstrating the suicide-preventing effect.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Stanley Medical Research Institute (07R-1832-Bogerts-SMRI Grant). The authors wish to thank Dr. Ch. Mawrin for qualitative neuropathological investigations of the brains included in this study and S. Funke for excellent technical assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Forensic Medicine, Medical University of Gdańsk, ul. Dębowa 23, 80-204, Gdańsk, Poland

    Tomasz Gos MD & Zbigniew Jankowski

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Otto-von-Guericke-University, Magdeburg, Germany

    Tomasz Gos MD, Dieter Krell, Hendrik Bielau, Ralf Brisch, Johann Steiner, Hans-Gert Bernstein & Bernhard Bogerts

  3. Institute of Legal Medicine, University of Essen, Essen, Germany

    Kurt Trübner

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  1. Tomasz Gos MD
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Correspondence to Tomasz Gos MD.

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Gos, T., Krell, D., Bielau, H. et al. Tyrosine hydroxylase immunoreactivity in the locus coeruleus is elevated in violent suicidal depressive patients. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosc 258, 513–520 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-008-0825-8

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