Symptom Dimensional Approach and BDNF in Unmedicated Obsessive-Compulsive Patients: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

There were no sociodemographic differences between the groups. The standard error of mean serum BDNF levels were reduced in unmedicated OCD patients (0.47+0.038) when compared to healthy controls (0.75+0.060) (P<.001). The patients with the presence of sex/religion obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) dimension (P=.002), with chronic course of OCS (P=.022) and the presence of lifetime major depression (P=.016) and social anxiety (P=.030) presented higher levels of BDNF than OCD patients without those features. The severity of aggression (P=.039) and sex/religion (P<.001) OCS dimension presented direct (moderate and strong, respectively) correlation with serum BDNF levels in this sample. Serum BDNF levels were decreased in OCD patients when compared to healthy controls.Discussion/ConclusionSexual and religious content of symptoms and aggression and sex/religion dimensions severity should be better explored, since these specific OCS dimensions could be based on neurocircuits diverse from those of the other OCS dimensions.

Diverse Glial Cell Line-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (GDNF) Support Between Mania and Schizophrenia: A Comparative Study in Four Major Psychiatric Disorders

“…Contrary to some studies reporting negative correlations between BDNF levels and illness duration [72], and age in schizophrenia, which may indicate disease progression [30], we found no correlations similar to a previous study [74]. We also found no correlation with YBOCS scores [14,45], contrary to negative correlation between BDNF levels and functioning [22], and positive correlations between GDNF levels and severity of ordering/washing symptoms which may be related to disturbed dopaminergic activity [22]. Since GDNF is a trophic factor for dopaminergic neurons [29], a negative correlation between insight scores may highlight some dopaminergic activity in OCD patients.…”

“…Disturbed plasticity may also be involved in the pathogenesis of OCD [22]. Reduced BDNF levels [14,22] regardless of drug treatment [73] and comorbid depressive disorder [45], but unchanged GDNF levels [22] are in line with our findings. Dysregulation of glutamatergic system is unclear in OCD [59].…”

“…Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) [15,78] and glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) [1] have essential roles in neuronal survival and differentiation and the formation of neural circuits. Decreased BDNF levels were consistently shown in depression [9,37], bipolar disorder [19,42], schizophrenia [10,18,30] and obsessive-compulsive disorders [14,22,45,73]. However, findings related to GDNF levels are inconsistent.…”

BDNF Val66Met polymorphism and plasma levels in Chinese Han population with obsessive-compulsive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder

“…In our previous work, we examined BDNF plasma levels in OCD, finding that BDNF plasma levels in drug-naïve OCD patients were lower than those in healthy people, but were not lower than those in drug-treated OCD patients (Wang et al, 2011). Other studies found that BDNF serum level was lower in OCD, and serum level was related to some special dimensions (Dos Santos et al, 2011) . Study about GAD found that BDNF plasma levels significantly increased after duloxetine treatment for 15 weeks (Ball et al, 2013).…”

“…So in this study, we did not divided patients into different subgroups according to their medication states. The only other two studies about BDNF levels in OCD patients reported that OCD patients showed lower BDNF serum levels compared to healthy controls (Dos Santos et al, 2011;Maina et al, 2010). A recent meta-analysis found that the change of BDNF levels was not consistent across various anxiety disorders and the totally decreased trend among anxiety disorders might largely be explained by the significantly lowered BDNF levels found in OCD (Suliman et al, 2013).…”