These results suggest that the BDNFVal66Met polymorphism may affect a smoker's response to nicotine in both schizophrenia and healthy controls from a Chinese Han population, but with differential effects in different aspects of smoking behaviors.
For 50 participants with acute episode of schizophrenia both plasma and serum BDNF, along with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the Clinical Global Impression scale, were assessed pretreatment and post treatment - after 6 weeks of either risperidone or olanzapine.
Serum BDNF levels seem to be one of the indicators of schizophrenia and its progress; nevertheless, we still do not have sufficient information about this neurotropic factor.
Differentially expressed genes that were confirmed by qPCR included others at genome-wide significant risk loci for schizophrenia (MAD1L1 and DPYD) and BDNF.
As a tool in psychopathology research, T-ARMS was shown to be capable of detecting five common SNPs in the BDNF gene (rs6265, rs988748, rs11030104, 11757G/C and rs7103411), which are all SNPs with previously demonstrated clinical relevance to schizophrenia and depression.
This study also suggests that the BDNF and GSK-3beta gene polymorphisms work in combination, but not individually, in predisposing patients with schizophrenia to TD.
With the exception of nominally significant associations between BDNFVal66Met variation and PANSS total, negative, or general scores, no association between the BDNFVal66Met polymorphism and schizophrenia was found.
From these findings, we conclude that if BDNF is indeed associated with schizophrenia, the A1 allele in BDNF-LCPR would be the most promising candidate.
In the present study, the BDNFVal66Met gene polymorphism was examined in 387 inpatients (259 men and 128 women) meeting the DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia and unrelated 365 healthy controls (255 men and 110 women).
And the regression analysis showed that negative symptoms and general psychopathology in PANSS, attention and delayed memory in RBANS, BDNF and SIRT1 were independent risk factors for depressive symptoms in schizophrenia.
These results do not support the hypothesis that the COMT Val(158)Met or BDNF C(270)T gene polymorphisms are associated with liability to schizophrenia.
We conclude that these BDNF SNPs play a role in development of comorbid alcohol dependence in schizophrenia while our data do not indicate that they play a role in alcohol-dependent patients who do not have schizophrenia.
Significant 2-way interactions were found for Val66Met × PN, 3-way interactions were found for Val66Met × PN × PA, and four-way interactions were found for Val66Met × PN × PA × EN with regard to the excitement scores.Our findings suggested an involvement of BDNFVal66Met polymorphism after ChT in terms of risk for schizophrenia symptoms.
Accumulating evidence suggests that epigenetic modifications of BDNF are associated with the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and mood disorders.