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Pitts' and McClure's Lactate-Anxiety Study Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Hanus J. Grosz  and
Barbara B. Farmer
Hanus J. Grosz
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatric Research, Indiana University Medical Center, 1100 West Michigan Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202, U.S.A.
Barbara B. Farmer
Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatric Research, Indiana University Medical Center, 1100 West Michigan Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202, U.S.A.
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Extract

Pitts and McClure (Pitts and McClure, 1967; Pitts, 1969) have recently suggested that all symptoms of anxiety and anxiety neurosis itself are caused by a raised blood and body fluids lactate level. As the biochemical mechanism underlying anxiety neurosis they proposed that the excess lactate complexes with, and reduces, the concentration of ionized calcium at the surface of excitable membranes to an extent that causes a disordered nerve activity to manifest itself in the form of anxiety symptoms. In support of this speculation, according to which anxiety neurosis is a biological disease essentially brought on by a lactate-induced hypocalcaemia, Pitts and McClure (1967) quote investigations that have shown that on standard exercise anxiety neurotics tend to produce higher blood lactate levels than do normal controls, and their own lactate infusion study. As pointed out elsewhere (Grosz and Farmer, 1969), neither the former nor the latter, however, can be considered satisfactory evidence.

Type
Papers
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 120 , Issue 557 , April 1972 , pp. 415 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1972 

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References

Grosz, H. J., and Farmer, B. B. (1969). ‘Blood lactate in the development of anxiety symptoms.’ Arch, gen. Psychiat., 21, 611–9.Google Scholar
Huckabee, W. E. (1968). ‘Relationship of pyruvate and lactate during anerobic metabolism.’ J. clin. Invest., 37, 244–54.Google Scholar
Pitts, F. N. Jr., and McClure, J. N. Jr. (1967). ‘Lactate metabolism in anxiety neurosis.’ New Eng. J. Med., 277, 1329–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pitts, F. N. Jr., and McClure, J. N. Jr. (1969). ‘The biochemistry of anxiety.’ Sci. Amer., 220 69–75.Google Scholar
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