title: Changes in the serum levels of autoantibody to nerve growth factor in patients with schizophrenia.
abstract: Studies were performed on 54 patients with different types of schizophrenia-paranoid (8), recurrent-progressive (30), and slowly progressive (16), with ICD-10 rubrics F20.00 and F20.01, F20.22 and F20.02, and F21 respectively. An immunoenzyme method was used to demonstrate that schizophrenia patients had elevated levels of autoantibody to nerve growth factor, by a factor of 1.5 compared with a group of 70 healthy subjects. The autoantibody level was related to the stage of disease: during the active phase, there was a significant increase compared with patients in remission (1.38 +/- 0.26 and 0.92 +/- 0.25 U respectively). There were no differences between variants with different disease courses. The authors suggest that the data obtained here indicate that the autoantibody level can be used as a measure of the activity of the disease process.
authors.affiliation: Department of Endogenous Psychoses of Middle Age, Science Research Institute Clinical Psychiatry, Mental Health Scientific Center, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow.
authors.forename: T P
authors.initials: TP
authors.lastname: Klyushnik
authors.forename: E V
authors.initials: EV
authors.lastname: Danilovskaya
authors.forename: O E
authors.initials: OE
authors.lastname: Vatolkina
authors.forename: I L
authors.initials: IL
authors.lastname: Turkova
authors.lastname: Tsutsul'kovskaya MYa
authors.forename: V A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Orlova
authors.forename: V G
authors.initials: VG
authors.lastname: Kaleda
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001323:Autoantibodies / Q000097:blood*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009414:Nerve Growth Factors / Q000276:immunology*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000097:blood* / Q000276:immunology*
chemical_list: D001323:Autoantibodies; D009414:Nerve Growth Factors