Brief ReportReduced Serum Nerve Growth Factor in Patients With Late-Life Depression
Section snippets
Participants
Thirty-eight elderly subjects with current major depressive episode (MDE) were included in this study. All subjects were outpatients observed at the Psychogeriatric Program from the Laboratory of Neuroscience (LIM-27) at the Institute of Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. They underwent comprehensive clinical, psychiatric, and cognitive assessments and were interviewed with the Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical
Results
There were no significant differences in gender distribution and age between groups. Nonetheless, patients with current MDE had worse cognitive performance as indicated by significantly lower Cambridge Cognitive Test and Mini-Mental State Examination scores (Table 1). Serum NGF levels were significantly lower in patients with current MDE and those with previous MDE as compared with control subjects (Table 1).
Post-hoc analysis showed that patients with previous and current MDE showed no
Discussion
NGF levels were significantly reduced in the elderly subjects with a previous history of major depression, in a similar fashion as found in patients presenting with a current depressive episode. This suggests that reduction in serum NGF levels may be a trait-dependent marker of LLD. The reduction in NGF levels observed in these subjects may indicate a significant disruption in neurotrophic regulatory mechanisms that take place during the depressive episode and do not completely recover despite
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