High levels of Phe CAN cause depression

Sharman et. al. [10]

Hey all you PKUs out there!

You hear everywhere if you are phenylketonuric that if you do not follow your diet and eat stuff that has alot of phenylalanine in it, you'll get depressed. In my opinon, I think not being allowed to eat all those nice stuff is depressing enough... whether you'll eat them or not you'll still get depressed, so it doesn't really matter anyway.

HOWEVER! Isn't it better if you get depressed because you cannot eat chocloate (chocolate has lots of Phe in it) than if you get depressed because you are sick? I mean, if you can't eat chocolate, you could go do something fun to take your mind of chocolate, then the world will be right again. But if you get depressed eating chocolate, you can't stop being depressed even if you wanted to, because it's your brain's that's messed up, not you.

Putting this aside, we wonder if what they say is true, so we up and went around searching for the answer. Here's what we found.

According to this study ("Depressive symptoms in adolescents with early and continuously treated phenylketonuria: Associations with phenylalanine and tyrosine levels.") by a bunch of scientists, they found out that the more you don't control your diet, the more depressed you will get.
Here's what they did.
They got 13 teenagers with PKU and compared the signs of depression they showed with 8 of the PKU teenagers' siblings without PKU (the control group).
They found that the more the PKUs were exposed to Phe, the more signs of depression were shown. They also found out that, the more depressed the PKUs got, the poorer their executive functions (meaning they couldn't interact with people properly.)
Therefore now we all know that, yes, too much Phe in you will make you mental. So too bad, listen to your parents and follow your diet.

This study is taken from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22609065
(Sharman R, Sullivan K, Young RM, McGill J. 2012 May 15. Depressive symptoms in adolescents with early and continuously treated phenylketonuria: Associations with phenylalanine and tyrosine levels. Gene. 2012 Aug 10;504(2):288-91 Retrieved on 10 July, 2012, from [PubMed] )