The role of NGF and IL-2 serum level in assisting the diagnosis in first episode schizophrenia

Neurotrophic factors in women with crack cocaine dependence during early abstinence: the role of early life stress

“…A clinical study reported elevated NGF levels in older healthy participants exposed to chronic stress, 60 whereas other studies on major depression reported lower serum levels of NGF. [61][62][63] On the other hand, peripheral GDNF was found to be increased in patients with late-onset depression compared with controls, 64 whereas other studies found GDNF to be decreased in individuals with major depression. 65 In addition, reduced expression of GDNF and NT-3 mRNA of peripheral blood cells in patients with major depression were associated with depressive state, 66 whereas increased cerebrospinal fluid levels of NT-3 were found in elderly patients with major depression.…”

First-Episode Psychosis: An Inflammatory State?

“…In particular, IL-2 levels were found to be decreased in two studies in drug-naïve patients [22,26], but appeared not significantly different in one of our studies where the subjects were minimally treated with antipsychotics (19 out of 24 patients were treated with antipsychotic medication with a mean ± SEM duration of treatment of 33.5 ± 7.2 days) [18], suggesting a possible effect of antipsychotic treatment in normalizing IL-2 levels. Other mixed findings come from studies reporting increased or unaffected levels of IL-8 [18,20,27], IL-10 [18,20,25], IL-4 [18,24], IL-18 [27,28] and MCP1 [18,27,29].…”

Serum levels of nerve growth factor (NGF) in patients with major depression disorder and suicide risk

“…Nerve growth factor (NGF) is an important member of the neurotrophins groups and is produced mainly in the cortex, hippocampus and hypothalamus, but also in the peripheral nervous system and immune system (Martino et al, 2013;Xiong et al, 2011). Recent studies have demonstrated that immune system cells may be an additional source of NGF secretion, and these cells express NGF and p75NTR receptors p140TrkA, promoting both cell survival and proliferation, in addition to inducing proinflammatory cytokines secretion (Takei and Laskey, 2008).…”

“…Clinical studies have detected reduced levels of NGF in patients with MDD when compared with healthy individual controls (Diniz et al, 2013;Xiong et al, 2011). Nevertheless, another study has found no difference in NGF levels in depressed individuals (Ziegenhorn et al, 2007).…”