Lorazepam reduces the serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor level in schizophrenia patients with catatonia

摘要

Catatonia is a common neuropsychiatric syndrome that can occur in schizophrenia, major depression and general medical conditions (Taylor and Fink, 2003). Previous studies revealed that catatonia could be from low gama-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-A receptor binding, dopamine hypoactivity and glutamate hyperactivity (Northoff, 2002; Carroll et al., 2007). Lorazepam and electroconvulsive therapy have been well established as the first-line choices for treating catatonia, and a related treatment algorithm has also been suggested (Taylor and Fink, 2003; Huang, 2005; Carroll et al., 2007). However, the real mechanism of catatonia was still unknown.Recently, we also found that patients with catatonic schizophrenia had lower serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) protein levels than patients with paranoid or residual schizophrenia in a previous cross-section study (Huang and Lee, 2006). The results supported us to investigate the changes of serum BDNF levels after the treatment of catatonia#