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Considerable research links both excess striatal dopamine transmission to positive symptoms in schizophrenia and dopamine receptor blockade to the clinical effectiveness of antipsychotic medications. Whether this dysfunction reflects excessive dopamine synthesis or deficient synaptic reuptake is uncertain. Nevertheless, dopamine receptor blockers are ineffective for an estimated 20% to 35% of schizophrenia patients. To better understand treatment resistance, investigators used positron emission tomography to study the striatal dopamine synthesis capacity relative to dopamine uptake in treatment-responsive versus treatment-resistant patients with schizophrenia.
The participants, 12 treatment-responsive and 12 treatment-resistant patients with…