Effect of chronic methamphetamine injection on levels of BDNF mRNA and its CpG island methylation in prefrontal cortex of rats.

Effect of chronic methamphetamine injection on levels of BDNF mRNA and its CpG island methylation in prefrontal cortex of rats. Asian J Psychiatr. 2019 Nov 23;48:101884 Authors: Salehzadeh SA, Mohammadian A, Salimi F Abstract Methamphetamine (METH) is a highly addictive psychostimulant. Its abuse causes problems in cognition, attention, or psychiatric conditions such as psychosis. Prefrontal cortex is involved in many aspects of drug addiction and in mental disorders similar to those triggered by METH. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), plays important roles in modulating different aspects of addiction, and is implicated in psychiatric conditions reminiscent of those suffered by METH-abusers. Male Wistar rats were intra-peritoneally injected with METH (8 mg/kg/day) for 14 days while control group received normal saline. After extraction of prefrontal cortices, expression of BDNF IV splice variant and methylation level of its CpG island were evaluated. The relative expression of BDNF IV in METH-treated group was 2.15 fold higher than the control group. Seven out of 29 CpG sites were significantly hypomethylated in the METH group, although none survived Bonferroni adjustment. However, the overall methylation level of the 29 CpGs was significantly lower in METH cases than in controls. We discuss the importance of our results and its implications in detail. PMID: 31830601 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Asian Journal of Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Asian J Psychiatr Source Type: research