Blood-Sugar Studies in Mental Disorders

It is a common experience in the investigation of mental disorders that glycosuria is frequently found, thus indicating a tendency in such cases to a faulty carbohydrate metabolism. With the exception of epilepsy, this occurrence of glycosuria has been noted in most mental conditions. Intermittent glycosuria is met with in general paralysis (Kraepelin) (1); Bond (2) and Strauss (3) note it in about 10per cent.of their cases. In dementia prócox Schultze and Knauer (4) did not observe glycosuria in the apathetic form of hebephrenia, but often found it to occur with catatonic excitement. With other observers (see Allers (5)) they record the marked association of glycosuria with depressed states, while its occurrence in mania was infrequent except in markedly excited and resistive cases.