This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related article  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Cheung and Earl¹ describe a family consisting of a mother and 2 sons exhibiting similar clinical and biochemical manifestations, which these authors suggest constitute a syndrome due to an inherited monoamine oxidase (MAO) deficiency. Elevated blood serotonin and normal or low-normal urinary 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA) levels are noted in all 3 subjects who manifest symptoms reminiscent of carcinoid syndrome, presumably largely due to their excess of circulating serotonin. These clinical features are long-term recurrent episodic facial flushing, headache, diarrhea, and psychiatric symptoms. The sons in particular are described as exhibiting symptoms strongly suggestive of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Biochemical and imaging studies for carcinoid tumor, pheochromocytoma, and other humoral causes of the symptoms are negative. A slight increase in 24-hour urinary normetanephrine level is seen in the 2 sons. However, that is not inconsistent with reduced MAO activity.

The authors treated the mother and 1 son with sertraline hydrochloride on the rationale . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLE

Monoamine Oxidase Deficiency: A Cause of Flushing and Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder?
N. Wah Cheung and John Earl
Arch Intern Med. 2001;161(20):2503-2504.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT