English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

Peripheral brain-derived neurotrophic factor in schizophrenia and the role of antipsychotics: meta-analysis and implications

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons80561

Turck,  C. W.
Dept. Translational Research in Psychiatry, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)
There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe
Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Fernandes, B. S., Steiner, J., Berk, M., Molendijk, M. L., Gonzalez-Pinto, A., Turck, C. W., et al. (2015). Peripheral brain-derived neurotrophic factor in schizophrenia and the role of antipsychotics: meta-analysis and implications. MOLECULAR PSYCHIATRY, 20(9), 1108-1119. doi:10.1038/mp.2014.117.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0029-C1CB-7
Abstract
It has been postulated that schizophrenia (SZ) is related to a lower expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). In the past few years, an increasing number of divergent clinical studies assessing BDNF in serum and plasma have been published. It is now possible to verify the relationship between BDNF levels and severity of symptoms in SZ as well as the effects of antipsychotic drugs on BDNF using meta-analysis. The aims of this study were to verify if peripheral BDNF is decreased in SZ, whether its levels are correlated with positive and negative symptomatology and if BDNF levels change after antipsychotic treatment. This report consists of two distinct meta-analyses of peripheral BDNF in SZ including a total of 41 studies and more than 7000 participants: (1) peripheral BDNF levels in serum and plasma were moderately reduced in SZ compared with controls. Notably, this decrease was accentuated with the disease duration. However, the extent of peripheral BDNF level decrease did not correlate with the severity of positive and negative symptoms. (2) In plasma, but not serum, peripheral BDNF levels are consistently increased after antipsychotic treatment irrespective of the patient's response to medication. In conclusion, there is compelling evidence that there are decreased levels of peripheral BDNF in SZ, in parallel to previously described reduced cerebral BDNF expression. It remains unclear whether these systemic changes are causally related to the development of SZ or if they are merely a pathologic epiphenomenon.