Glycine and D-Cycloserine in Schizophrenia

To determine if glycine produces improvement in negative symptoms and D-cycloserine produces worsening in symptoms compared to placebo, patients will undergo a double blind study of d-cycloserine and glycine treatment added to clozapine. Clozapine is more effective for negative symptoms of schizophrenia than conventional neuroleptics, but the neurochemical actions contributing to this superior clinical efficacy remain unclear. Recent evidence points to a role for glutamatergic dysregulation in schizophrenia, as well as important differences between conventional agents and clozapine in effects upon glutamatergic systems. D-cycloserine, a partial agonist at the glycine modulatory site of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor, improves negative symptoms when added to conventional agents and worsens negative symptoms when added to clozapine. High-dose glycine also improves negative symptoms and has provided preliminary evidence suggesting that glycine improves negative symptoms when added to clozapine. Serum concentrations of glycine predicted response to both high-dose glycine and D-cycloserine. Both clozapine and D-cycloserine may improve negative symptoms by activation of the glycine modulatory site of the NMDA receptor complex. Because D-cycloserine is a partial agonist, it may act as an antagonist at the glycine site in the presence of clozapine, whereas the full agonist, glycine, would not be expected to worsen negative symptoms in the presence of clozapine. This study proposes to administer a fixed-dose of D-cycloserine, glycine, or placebo added to clozapine in 45 patients with schizophrenia. Because assessments are standardized between studies, results from this study can be compared with results from a previous study of D-cycloserine added to conventional neuroleptic. The study was ultimately suspended before participants were enrolled, due to definitive findings indicating that pairing treatment of D-cycloserine with Clozapine resulted in worsening of negative symptoms.