Clinical Aspects of a Serologic Study of Psychoses

In a previous paper (Kurland and Fessel¹), a significant difference between the mean serum macroglobulin levels of schizophrenic and manic-depressive patients in two hospital populations was reported. In a second paper (Fessel, Kurland, and Cutler²), this finding was reported for a third hospital population, and it was shown that the mean serum macroglobulin level of a group of schizophrenic subjects was significantly elevated over that of the comparable group of nonpsychotic controls. In the present paper, the specific criteria utilized in the selection of subjects for these studies are delineated; and the import of the criteria is illustrated by a data analysis which reveals that recovered schizophrenic subjects had a mean macroglobulin level closely resembling that of the hospitalized schizophrenic psychotics. The difficulty of selecting appropriate controls for psychiatric studies is discussed in the light of the data revealing that the group of nonhospitalized schizophrenic outpatients had no