Our data confirm that serum BDNF levels do not correlate with either chronic alcohol consumption or peripheral toxicity but may be linked to neuronal aspects of alcohol consumption and dependence. The increased serum levels of BDNF may reflect the concomitant activation of BDNF synthesis that accompanies the neuronal remodeling triggered by alcohol withdrawal and suggests that BDNF synthesis may have a role in the long-term maintenance of abstinence. Monitoring the serum BDNF levels of alcoholics undergoing treatment could help to characterize alcohol dependence profiles and predict relapse.

Under these conditions, schizophrenic patients were hypersensitive to pain induction compared with normal individuals. The hypoalgesia typically associated with schizophrenic patients may correspond to fewer than normal reports of pain, rather than to impaired sensations of pain. This should be taken into account during routine medical practice.

The COVID-19 epidemic has led to the intense mobilization of all health professionals, including those involved in research. From the very beginning, research ethics committees (RECs) have been called upon and mobilized to carry out the scientific and ethical evaluations of research projects to achieve a sound analysis of their risk/benefit balance. The aim of this article is to present an ethical reflection on the challenges and consequences of the fast-track procedure for the evaluation of COVID-19 research projects in the context of a public health emergency. Indeed, a large number of protocols of reduced rigor were hastily prepared without collaboration between researchers and in the absence of national regulation. As a result, a number of ethical dilemmas have emerged concerning the opposing needs of pragmatism imposed by the emergency context and the ethical principles that should govern the conduct of research. Moreover, the dispersion of these individual projects, aggravated by excessive media coverage of specific treatments, has resulted in a weakened impact of the research in the epidemic context. This article provides suggestions for the ethical management of ongoing and upcoming research, giving RECs the opportunity to adapt their evaluations to avoid allowing the pragmatism of the emergency context to subvert the inviolability of the epistemological and ethical principles of research on humans. This reflection may strengthen the ethical basis for the formulation of their decisions.

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