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A new blood test which may serve to distinguish the psychotic from the nonpsychotic was described recently to a gathering of medical experts at Creedmoor State Hospital.
The report was presented by Doctors Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler who developed the test in their work at the Creedmoor Institute of Psychobiologic Studies. Collaborating in the study were Dr. Co Tui, Dr. Felix Marti-Ibanez and M. B. Mittleman, biometrician.
Utilizing a machine now used in inudstry to measure viscosity of such products as oil and plastics, the test measures physical changes in blood during clotting, the doctors reported. The machine was invented by two physicists who are consultants to the institute, Stanley Rich and Wilfred Roth. Adaptation of the machine is the result of a three-year search for a test to measure precisely differences in the clotting process that had been observed clinically between the blood of psychotic and nonpsychotic individuals.
According to Dr. Newton Bigelow, State Commissioner of Mental Hygiene, the test offers many possibilities. “It uses physical and mathematical principles,” he said, “to discriminate with a high degree of statistical accuracy between the blood of psychotic and nonpsychotic subjects. We must proceed with caution, however, in the use of such a test. Considerable additional research is needed before we can be sure of all its implications.”
Experiments conducted at the institute involved 73 subjects (46 patients, mainly hospitalized and nonhospitalized schizophrenics, and 27 nonpsychotic controls). According to the report, mathematical analysis of the physical data obtained from blood samples identified psychoses with a level of accuracy exceeding 83 per cent. Further differentiation between treated and untreated psychotic patients was also said to be attained with an accuracy of more than 80 per cent.
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