Decreased Serum Oxytocin and Increased Homocysteine in First-Episode Schizophrenia Patients

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University. All the patients or their statutory guardians and HC were required to sign an informed consent form.Sample CollectionBlood samples of 52 FES patients and 41 healthy controls were collected from each participant at 08:00 a.m. after overnight fasting. Serum was isolated after centrifuging at 3500 rpm for 10 min, and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were isolated and stored at –80°C until the biochemistry analysis or RNA was extracted without repeated freezing and thawing.Measurement of Serum OXT, OXTR, IL-6, Hcy and hsCRP LevelsSerum OXT and OXTR as well as IL-6 levels were measured in duplicate by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) using a comercially available kit (Cloud-Clone Corp). Serum Hcy and hsCRP were measured with latex enhanced immunoturbidimetric assay in a HITACHI 7600 020 automatic biochemical analyzer.RNA Extraction and Real Time qPCR AnalysisThe RNA was extracted from PBMCs in a MagNA Pure LC2.0 Automatic extractor with a MagNA Pure LC Total Nucleic Acid Isolation Kit (Roche Diagnostics, IN, USA). The complementary DNA (cDNA) was synthesized after extracting the RNA of all samples. The expression levels of OXT and OXTR mRNA were measured using real-time quantitative PCR. The primers of OXT and OXTR genes as well as reference genes refer to Yang et al. (13). All reactions were completed in triplicates with the Roche LightCy...
Source: Frontiers in Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research