BDNF Is Decreased in Depression and Mania
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Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which protects neurons and is necessary for long-term memory, can be measured in blood. In a symposium on bipolar disorder at the 2012 meeting of the Society of Biological Psychiatry, researcher Flavio Kapsczinski reviewed evidence from several meta-analyses showing that low levels of BDNF in the blood correlate with severity of an episode of depression or mania. In addition to the findings that BDNF levels are low during a mood episode, there are other reliable biomarkers of illness, including increases in intracellular calcium, increases in cortisol and failure to suppress cortisol by dexamethasone, and a variety of indices of inflammation and oxidative stress.
There are several common variants of the gene responsible for the production of BDNF, depending on which types of amino acids appear in its coding—valine or methionine. The Val66Val allele of proBDNF is the most frequently occurring in the population, and is the best-functioning variant. Those with a methionine substitution (Val66Met or Met66Met) have less efficient forms of BDNF. Researcher Jair Soares reported that the Met allele was associated with deficits in declarative memory in patients with bipolar disorder, and was also associated with smaller volume of the anterior cingulate gyrus.
Researcher Ghanshyam N. Pandey reported that patients with pediatric or adult bipolar disorder had decreased BDNF protein and mRNA levels in platelets and lymphocytes compared to controls. Treatment significantly increased these BDNF levels in the pediatric, but not in the adult bipolar subjects. These measurements in blood are consistent with findings that there are decreases in BDNF in the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex of patients who died while depressed or who committed suicide compared to controls.
