Department of Psychiatry, Kaohsiung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital and Chang Gung University College of Medicine, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
PLoS One. 2019 Feb 22;14(2):e0212373. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0212373. eCollection 2019.
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has been associated with the psychopathology of both major depressive disorder (MDD) and schizophrenia (SZ). However, studies focusing on the accuracy of BDNF levels to differentiate between these patients and healthy controls (HCs) have been rare.
Over a discrete ten-year period, we investigated serum BDNF levels in patients with MDD or SZ and compared them to HCs.
We found serum BDNF levels in 224 samples with SZ to be lower than those in 390 HCs samples (p = 0.007), but not lower than those in the 273 samples with MDD. Male MDD patients tended to have lower BDNF levels compared to male HCs (p = 0.083). The receiver operating characteristic curve analysis demonstrated that BDNF levels were moderately accurate in differentiating male MDD patients and female patients with SZ from HCs (AUC = 0.652 and 0.623, respectively). The most adequate cut-off points for BDNF level were 5.11 ng/ml (sensitivity = 81.1%, specificity = 48.5%) and 5.88 ng/ml (sensitivity = 74.1%, specificity = 57.4%), respectively.
Our results support that BDNF demonstrated moderate accuracy in distinguishing male patients with MDD and female patients with SZ from HCs. In the future, greater samples would be required to further confirm these results.
脑源性神经营养因子（BDNF）与重性抑郁障碍（MDD）和精神分裂症（SZ）的精神病理学都有关联。然而，专注于 BDNF 水平来区分这些患者与健康对照（HCs）的准确性的研究很少。
在一个离散的十年期间，我们研究了 MDD 或 SZ 患者的血清 BDNF 水平，并将其与 HCs 进行了比较。
我们发现 224 例 SZ 样本的血清 BDNF 水平低于 390 例 HCs 样本（p = 0.007），但高于 273 例 MDD 样本。与男性 HCs 相比，男性 MDD 患者的 BDNF 水平往往较低（p = 0.083）。受试者工作特征曲线分析表明，BDNF 水平在区分男性 MDD 患者和女性 SZ 患者与 HCs 方面具有中等准确性（AUC 分别为 0.652 和 0.623）。BDNF 水平的最佳截断点分别为 5.11ng/ml（敏感性=81.1%，特异性=48.5%）和 5.88ng/ml（敏感性=74.1%，特异性=57.4%）。
我们的结果支持 BDNF 在区分男性 MDD 患者和女性 SZ 患者与 HCs 方面具有中等准确性。未来需要更大的样本量来进一步证实这些结果。
