The major psychoses and neuroses as omega-3 essential fatty acid deficiency syndrome: substrate pellagra.

Abstract

Pellagra was once a major cause of three behaviorally different mental disorders-schizophreniform, manic-depressive-like, and phobic neurotic - plus drying dermatoses, autonomic neuropathies, tinnitus, and fatigue. In this preliminary study all three of the corresponding present-day mental diseases are found to exhibit, statistically, the same pellagraform physical disorders but to ameliorate not so much with vitamins as with supplements of a newly discovered trace omega-3 essential fatty acid (w3-EFA), which provides the substrate upon which niacin and other B vitamin holoenzymes act uniquely to form the prostaglandin 3 series tissue hormones regulating neurocircuits en block. Since present-day refining and food selection patterns, as well as pure corn diets, deplete both the B vitamins and W3-EFA, the existence of therapeutically cross-reacting homologous catalyst and substrate deficiency forms of pellagra are postulated, the first contributing to the B vitamin deficiency epidemics of 50-100 years ago, the second to the more recent endemic "Diseases of Western Civilization" which express in certain genetic subgroups as the major mental illnesses of today.

• Authors: D O Rudin
• Journal: Biological psychiatry (Biol Psychiatry) Vol. 16 Issue 9 Pg. 837-50 (Sep 1981) ISSN: 0006-3223 [Print] United States
• PMID: 7028146 (Publication Type: Case Reports, Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't)

Chemical References

• Fatty Acids, Essential
• Fatty Acids, Unsaturated
• Linseed Oil

Topics

• Adult
• Agoraphobia (drug therapy)
• Bipolar Disorder (drug therapy)
• Fatty Acids, Essential (deficiency)
• Fatty Acids, Unsaturated (therapeutic use)
• Female
• Humans
• Linseed Oil (therapeutic use)
• Male
• Neurotic Disorders (drug therapy)
• Pellagra (drug therapy)
• Psychotic Disorders (drug therapy)
• Schizophrenia (drug therapy)