Serum cytokine concentrations in patients with schizophrenia

In vivo type II T-helper cells shift in schizophrenia compared to sex- and age-matched healthy controls

“…At individual cytokine levels, our findings generally correspond to the majority of relevant literature showing increased serum IL-6 22,[40][41][42][43]45,[65][66][67][68][69][70] , unaltered serum IL-2 13,18,26,71 , TNF-α [17][18][19][20]22,43,71 , IFN-γ 13,27,57 , IL-4 24,70 , and IL-10 24 levels in schizophrenia as a whole group. It's noteworthy that although recent evidence showing intense exercise transiently increases IL-6 72 , blood samples of our subjects were collected between 8-9am without any exercise.…”

“…However, IL-4 could also influence the pathology through its impact on IFN-γ/IL-10 and IL-2/IL-4 balance since serum IFN-γ/IL-10 balance were related to symptom severity in females and IL-2/IL-4 ratios to negative symptoms/psychopathology in males with schizophrenia, but not it per se. Diversities between some other studies 15,18,20,21,24,26,41,68,71,74 and ours may be raised by different gender distributions and/or average ages since (1) gender dimorphism during immune responses was observed 75 and (2) cytokine levels could vary in age-related manner 20,76 . The subjects of those studies were either not exactly sex-and/or age-matched or averagely much older than ours.…”

Involvement of cytokines in normal CNS development and neurological diseases: Recent progress and perspectives

“…In particular, altered expression of cytokines may play a role in the pathogenesis of neuropsychiatric diseases in childhood (Malek-Ahmadi, 1996). Although some studies have shown no difference in CSF cytokine profiles in schizophrenia (Baker et al, 1996;el-Mallakh et al, 1993), others have reported elevations of IL-1␤ or IL-2 in adult schizophrenics (Katila et al, 1994;McAllister et al, 1995). Elevated type 2 cytokines have been observed in the CSF of patients with childhoodonset schizophrenia, implicating these cytokines in the pathogenesis of the disease in childhood (Mittleman et al, 1997).…”

Lower serum cytokine levels in smokers than nonsmokers with chronic schizophrenia on long-term treatment with antipsychotics

“…However, these cytokine findings are not all consistent. For example, studies have found decreased and normal IL-2 levels in serum or CSF, normal serum IL-6 and sIL-2R levels, and decreased sIL-6R levels (Baker et al 1996;Cazzullo et al 2001;Theodoropoulou et al 2001). Nevertheless, recent studies suggest that cytokines play important roles in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and the pharmacological effects of antipsychotic medications (Kronfol and Remick 2000;Maes et al 2002;Zhang et al 2004Zhang et al , 2005.…”