ArticleFrontiers in psychiatry2020
Serum Epidermal Growth Factor is Low in Schizophrenia and Not Affected by Antipsychotics Alone or Combined With Electroconvulsive Therapy.
Article in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Childhood insulin resistance and neural stem cell dysfunction in psychiatric disorders: Role ofWorld journal of stem cells · 2025Review
- Editorial: New insights into investigating schizophrenia as a disorder of molecular pathways.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2024Article
- Sarcosine May Induce EGF Production or Inhibit the Decline in EGF Concentrations in Patients with Chronic Schizophrenia (Results of the PULSAR Study).Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- GPCR Pharmacological Profiling of Aaptamine from the Philippine SpongeMolecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Dopamine Receptor Subtypes, Physiology and Pharmacology: New Ligands and Concepts in Schizophrenia.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEpidermal growth factor (EGF) is implicated in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia, suggesting possible value as a biomarker for disease severity or treatment response. However, basal EGF levels and changes during treatment are inconsistent across studies. The goal of this study is to compare serum EGF in schizophrenia patients before and after treatment with antipsychotics alone or combined with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
methodPatients meeting DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia were recruited from June 2013 to December 2015 (n = 186) and followed up after 8 weeks of treatment with antipsychotics alone (n = 119, drug group) or combined with ECT (n = 67, ECT group). Serum EGF levels were measured by ELISA and compared among patients and 74 healthy control subjects. Psychopathology and clinical effects were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS).
resultsBasal serum EGF was significantly lower in the entire patient cohort compared to healthy controls (
conclusionsSerum EGF concentration is low in schizophrenia but is unchanged following treatment with antipsychotics alone or combined with ECT, regardless of clinical response. Thus, serum EGF is not a surrogate biomarker for treatment response and is unlikely to be involved in the therapeutic mechanisms of antipsychotics or ECT.
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