Furthermore, evidence of reduced cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum D-serine levels in schizophrenic patients68,69 as well as evidence of elevated levels of

the endogenous GMS antagonist kynurenate in postmortem brain and CSF70,71 suggest that the GMS occupancy is downshifted or shifted toward antagonism in the disease state. There have been more than 80 clinical trials of agents that increase agonist occupancy of the GMS in schizophrenia, including D-serine, glycine, D-cycloserine, Dalanine, and sarcosine. Several of these studies have reported significant Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical improvements over multiple symptom domains while others have not. Aside from intrinsic differences in efficacy between candidate GMS regulators, methodological factors likely contribute to the variability in results among these

Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical trials, most notably small sample sizes, variability in concomitant typical and atypical antipsychotic use, and subject compliance. Also, important to consider from the point of view of evaluating the promise of the GMS strategy, the majority of these trials have been conducted using glycine and/or the Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical partial GMS agonist D-cycloserine, which are not the most potent agonist of the site. Studies employing cloned NMDA receptors expressed in a Xenopus oocyte Selleck Crenolanib system suggest the potency of D-serine is about three times that of glycine,72 and D-cycloserine is a partial agonist with only about half the efficacy of glycine at the GMS.73 Still, glycine and D-cycloserine have been more widely tested than D-serine due to historical approval of these agents for human use, glycine as a nonessential amino acid, and D-cycloserine as a second-line antibiotic effective against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. A recent meta-analysis Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of strategies to enhance NMDA receptor-mediated neurotransmission in schizophrenia reported the striking finding that NMDA-enhancing molecules as a whole exerted statistically significant effects on total psychopathology, depressive symptoms, negative symptoms, cognitive symptoms, positive Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical symptoms, and general psychopathology in descending order of effect

size.74 The meta-analysis included results from 26 double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials in which the treatment lasted at least 4 weeks. Agents tested were glycine, Tryptophan synthase D-cycloserine, D-serine, sarcosine, and D-alanine. Pooling of data from different studies was made possible by including only those for which enough data were available to calculate a standardized metric of the degree of improvement seen in a particular symptom domain relative to placebo, or the effect size (ES). There was some heterogeneity in the trials that were included, in that patients enrolled were administered concomitant typical or atypical antipsychotics and in others were not. Also, trials of chronic stable and acutely exacerbated schizophrenia were included.