Nerve Growth Factor, Stress and Diseases

Abstract

Stress is a constant threat for homeostasis and is represented by different extrinsic and intrinsic stimuli (stressors, Hans Selye's "noxious agents"), such as aggressive behavior, fear, diseases, physical activity, drugs, surgical injury, and environmental and physiological changes. Our organism responds to stress activating the adaptive stress system to activate compensatory responses for restoring homeostasis. Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) was discovered as a signaling molecule involved in survival, protection, differentiation, and proliferation of sympathetic and peripheral sensory neurons. NGF mediates stress with an important role in translating environmental stimuli into physiological and pathological feedbacks since NGF levels undergo important variations after exposure to stressful events. Psychological stress, lifestyle stress, and oxidative stress are well known to increase the risk of mental disorders such as schizophrenia, major depressive disorders, bipolar disorder, alcohol use disorders and metabolic disorders such as metabolic syndrome. This review reports recent works describing the activity of NGF in mental and metabolic disorders related to stress.

Knowledge and Practice towards Alcohol Consumption in a Sample of University Students

“…Although a large body of evidence about the detrimental effects of alcohol on behavioral [1][2][3][4][5][6] and physical health [7][8][9][10][11][12] has been provided, a significant amount of people in Europe are still drinking [13] and it is still considered part of a Mediterranean diet [14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. The most affected human systems are the nervous, digestive, and cardiovascular systems [12,21,22].…”

Transgenerational Abnormalities Induced by Paternal Preconceptual Alcohol Drinking: Findings from Humans and Animal Models

“…As ethanol exposure activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis acting as a physiological stressor, it has been hypothesized that PPAC impacts stress responsivity of offspring [122,123]. This hypothesis seems to be partially confirmed as the studies show ethanol-sired male offspring sexspecific blunted plasma corticosterone levels in response to acute restraint stress, resistance to stressinduced excessive fluid intake, enhanced sensitivity to the anxiolytic and motor-enhancing effects of ethanol, reduced ethanol preference and consumption, altered BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) and/or NGF (nerve growth factor) (well-known regulators of ethanol drinking behavior [16,26,117,[124][125][126][127][128][129][130][131][132][133][134][135][136][137][138][139][140][141][142]) expression in the ventral tegmental area compared to control-sired male offspring. No differences among ethanol-and control-sired female offspring have been found on these assays.…”

“…Modifications in NGF and BDNF levels in the serum and plasma are shown during the onset and progression of many disorders, including neurological, psychiatric and immune diseases [128,[153][154][155][156][157][158][159][160][161][162][163][164] and during physiopathological conditions as cardiometabolic disruptions [165][166][167][168][169], stressful events [126], aging [169][170][171] and the post-partum period [127,172]. Recent findings on murine models have analyzed the relationship between PPAC, FASD and neurotrophins alterations suggesting that these proteins could act in a compensatory manner as neuroprotective molecules that can oppose the harmful effects of prenatal alcohol exposure [173,174].…”

Psychological Status, Compliance, Serum Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, and Nerve Growth Factor Levels of Patients with Depression after Augmented Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy

“…Accumulating evidence shows that neuroplastic mechanisms dependent of BDNF are deleteriously changed in major depression and animal models of depressive disorder [12]. Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) has been discovered as a signaling molecule that is vital to survival, protection, and differentiation of sympathetic and peripheral sensory neurons [13]. Declined NGF serum levels can be served as a possible biomarker of major depression disorder [14].…”