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- Title
Lower antioxidant capacity in the prefrontal cortex of individuals with schizophrenia.
- Authors
Zhang, Yiru; Catts, Vibeke Sørensen; Shannon Weickert, Cynthia
- Abstract
Objective: The glutathione (GSH) pathway is the main antioxidant system to protect against oxidative stress in the human brain. In this study, we tested whether molecular components of the GSH antioxidant system are changed in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex tissue from people with schizophrenia compared to controls. Method: The levels of total glutathione and reduced GSH were determined by fluorometric assay via quantifying thiols in extracts from frontal cortex of 68 people. Immunoblotting was used to measure levels of enzymes responsible for maintaining GSH, the glutamyl-cysteine ligase (GCL) catalytic subunit (GCLC) and the GSH peroxidase (GPx)-like protein (n = 74). Quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was used to measure GCLC messenger RNA (mRNA) expression. Results: Both total glutathione (t(66) = 2.467, p = 0.016) and reduced GSH (t(66) = 3.001, p = 0.004) levels were significantly less in people with schizophrenia than in controls. However, there were no significant differences in either GCLC-like protein (t(72) = −1.077, p = 0.285) or GCLC mRNA expression (t(71) = −0.376, p = 0.708) between people with schizophrenia and control subjects. There was also no significant difference of GPx-like protein levels between schizophrenia and controls (t(72) = −0.060, p = 0.952). Moreover, no significant correlations of putative confounding factors with GSH changes were detected. Discussion: These results suggest that people with schizophrenia have impaired GSH antioxidant capacity, alongside normal levels of key regulatory proteins.
- Subjects
FRONTAL lobe; AMINO acids; FLUORIMETRY; GENE expression; GLUTATHIONE; IMMUNOBLOTTING; POLYMERASE chain reaction; SCHIZOPHRENIA; SULFUR compounds; MATHEMATICAL variables; REVERSE transcriptase polymerase chain reaction; PHYSIOLOGY
- Publication
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 2018, Vol 52, Issue 7, p690
- ISSN
0004-8674
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/0004867417728805