Associations between plasma levels of 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylglycol (MHPG) and negative symptoms or cognitive impairments in early-stage schizophrenia

✍ Scribed by Naoki Goto; Reiji Yoshimura; Shingo Kakeda; Junji Moriya; Kenji Hayashi; Atsuko Ikenouchi-Sugita; Wakako Umene-Nakano; Hikaru Hori; Nobuhisa Ueda; Yukunori Korogi; Jun Nakamura

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 228 KB
• Volume: 24
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0885-6222
• DOI: 10.1002/hup.1070

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Schizophrenic patients demonstrate a variety of cognitive deficits, including attention, executive functions, and working memory, even in the early stage of disease. In the present study, we examined the association between blood levels of 3‐methoxy‐4‐hydroxyphenylglycol (MHPG), homovanillic acid (HVA), or brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and scores on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) in patients with early‐stage schizophrenia. We also investigated the association between frontal GABA levels using 1H‐magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) at 3T and scores on the WCST in the same patients. Blood levels of BDNF and catecholamine metabolites and brain GABA levels using 1H‐MRS were measured in 18 schizophrenic patients (nine males, nine females; age range 13–52 year). A significantly positive correlation was observed between plasma MHPG levels and %PEM (rho = −0.686, p = 0.0047). A trend toward negative correlation was found between frontal lobe GABA levels and the per cent of preservation error (%PEM) in the early stage of schizophrenia (rho = −0.420, p = 0.0836). These results suggest that noradrenergic neurons might be involved in neuropsychological functions in early‐stage of schizophrenia. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.