Recent studies demonstrate that the neuropeptide VGF (nonacronymic) is regulated in the hippocampus by antidepressant therapies and animal models of depression and that acute VGF treatment has antidepressant-like activity in animal paradigms.
Although LTP was normal in slices from VGF knock-out mice, LTD could not be induced, and VGF mutant mice were impaired in hippocampal-dependent spatial learning and contextual fear conditioning tasks.
We summarize experimental data describing the roles of BDNF, VGF and other neuropeptides in depression and how they may be acting through the generation of new neurons and altered synaptic activity.
In this study, we tested the leukocyte mRNA expression levels of genes belonging to glucocorticoid receptor (GR) function (FKBP-4, FKBP-5, and GR), inflammation (interleukin (IL)-1α, IL-1β, IL-4, IL-6, IL-7, IL-8, IL-10, macrophage inhibiting factor (MIF), and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α), and neuroplasticity (brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), p11 and VGF), in healthy controls (n=34) and depressed patients (n=74), before and after 8 weeks of treatment with escitalopram or nortriptyline, as part of the Genome-based Therapeutic Drugs for Depression study.