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Volume 9 Supplement 1

1st International Congress on Neurobiology and Clinical Psychopharmacology and European Psychiatric Association Conference on Treatment Guidance

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Plasma Brain-Derived-Neurotrophic Factor levels and cognitive function in euthymic bipolar type I patients

Annals of General Psychiatry volume 9, Article number: S218 (2010) Cite this article

Background

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is an important contributor to the pathophysiology of bipolar disorder (BD), and abnormalities in the BDNF-signaling system may be implicated in the cognitive decline observed in BD patients. We aimed to investigate serum BDNF levels in BD patients, and its relation with neurocognitive function.

Materials and methods

We measured serum BDNF levels using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method in 65 euthymic type I BD patients and 50 healthy controls, and administered a neuropsychological test battery to assess attention and mental control, perceptual-motor skills, executive functions, verbal fluency and abstraction, visuo-spatial attention, and memory.

Results

We found no significant differences regarding serum BDNF levels in BD patients and healthy controls. We found significant positive associations between serum BDNF levels and illness duration, and manic and depressive episodes in female BD patients only. Serum BDNF levels were lower in patients medicated with antipsychotics and/or lithium, whereas patients on valproate and/or antidepressants showed higher serum BDNF levels. Patients performed significantly worse on 11 out of 16 neurocognitive tests as compared to controls. We found a significant positive association between serum BDNF levels and a test of verbal fluency in both BD patients and controls.

Conclusions

Present results support the hypothesis that BDNF normalizes with mood stabilization and pharmacological treatment. Our findings in young and physically healthy patients, with short illness duration and few mood episodes may explain the lack of association between serum BDNF levels and neurocognitive performance, even though cognitive performance in patients was overall significantly worse as compared to healthy controls.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bipolar Disorders Research Program, Hospital Santa Maria, Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon, (FMUL), Portugal

    Vasco Videira Dias, Sofia Brissos & Maria Luisa Figueira

  2. Centro Hospitalar Psiquiátrico de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Sofia Brissos

  3. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

    Benicio N Frey

  4. Department of Psychiatry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

    Ana Cristina Andreazza

  5. Bipolar Disorders Program and Laboratory of Molecular Psychiatry, Hospital de Clinicas de Porto Alegre, Brazil and INCT Translational Medicine, Brazil

    Vasco Videira Dias & Flávio Kapczinski

Authors
  1. Vasco Videira Dias
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  2. Sofia Brissos
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  3. Benicio N Frey
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  4. Ana Cristina Andreazza
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  5. Flávio Kapczinski
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  6. Maria Luisa Figueira
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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Dias, V.V., Brissos, S., Frey, B.N. et al. Plasma Brain-Derived-Neurotrophic Factor levels and cognitive function in euthymic bipolar type I patients. Ann Gen Psychiatry 9 (Suppl 1), S218 (2010). https://doiorg.publicaciones.saludcastillayleon.es/10.1186/1744-859X-9-S1-S218

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  • DOI: https://doiorg.publicaciones.saludcastillayleon.es/10.1186/1744-859X-9-S1-S218

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Annals of General Psychiatry

ISSN: 1744-859X