Nerve Growth Factor Serum Levels Are Associated With Regional Gray Matter Volume Differences in Schizophrenia Patients

ConclusionOur pilot study offered hints about the influence of serum NGF on the brain structure of several regions in schizophrenia patients, while no comparable results had been found in healthy controls. Remarkably, changes correlated with NGF serum levels manifested also in the cingulate cortex, a region that also showed volume reductions our group comparison between patients and controls and has been repeatedly implicated in the literature as morphologically altered in schizophrenia. While our sample certainly was small, we regard these findings as an encouraging indication for further research. The recruitment of larger samples will be an important goal for future studies.Ethics StatementThe study protocol was approved by the local ethics committee of the RWTH Aachen University. Before being enrolled in the study, written informed consent was obtained from each subject in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.Author ContributionsTN-J contributed to the conception and design of the study, and supervised data acquisition, analysis, and interpretation, as well as manuscript writing. LM, MS, and AN conducted informed consent. WG arranged MRI settings. KN, TW, and VK performed analysis of the MRI data. KN contributed to data acquisition, analysis, interpretation, and manuscript writing. CH contributed to data acquisition. TW, TA, WG, and UH contributed to manuscript writing.FundingThis work was sponsored by the foundation program “START” of the Ministry of...
Source: Frontiers in Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research