Elsevier

Schizophrenia Research

Volume 192, February 2018, Pages 457-458
Schizophrenia Research

Serum NCAM levels and cognitive deficits in first episode schizophrenia patients versus health controls

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2017.06.011Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) is a glycoprotein and plays an important role in cell-cell adhesion, neural migration, neurite outgrowth, synaptic plasticity and brain development.

We investigated the relationship between the serum NCAM concentration and cognitive deficit in first episode drug naïve schizophrenia (FES) patients.

Methods

Thirty FES patients and thirty healthy controls were recruited for this study. Psychiatric symptoms were assessed by the positive and negative syndrome scale (PANSS). Cognitive functions were assessed by measurement and treatment research to improve cognition in schizophrenia (MATRICS) and consensus cognitive battery (MCCB). Serum levels of NCAM were determined by ELISA.

Results

Schizophrenia patients had decreased serum NCAM concentrations than controls (− 30%, p < 0.001). Cognitive scores were significantly lower in FES patients than healthy controls (− 34%, p < 0.001). The NCAM concentrations were positively correlated with the total scores of MCCB (r = 0.438, p = 0.003). Multiple regression analysis confirmed that serum NCAM concentration was an independent contributor to MCCB total Scores.

Conclusions

There were a close relationship between the serum NCAM concentrations and cognitive deficits in FES patients. Since NCAM has an important role in neurodevelopmental processes, these results support the neurodevelopmental dysfunction hypothesis of schizophrenia and suggest that an altered NCAM may be one of the risk factors for schizophrenia including cognitive deficits.

Section snippets

Contributors

Xu-Feng Huang, Xiang Yang Zhang, Yun-Long Tan and Hui-Mei An were responsible for the study design, statistical analysis and manuscript preparation. Hongzhen Fan, FengMei Fan, Shu-ping Tan, Jing Shi, Zhi-Ren Wang and Fu-De Yang were responsible for recruiting the patients, performing the clinical rating and collecting the samples. LuPing Zhou, Yinghua Yu and Boz Zehre were involved in evolving the ideas and editing the manuscript. Xu-Feng Huang, Xiang Yang Zhang, Yun-Long Tan and Hui-Mei An

Role of funding source

This study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81461130016 and 81371477), the Natural Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality (7151005 and 7132063), Beijing Municipal Excellent Talents Foundation (2014000021469G218), these sources had no further role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the article.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflicts to disclose.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank Ning Fan for her hard work and significant contributions towards the study.

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Professor Yunlong Tan and Professor Xu-Feng Huang contributed equally to this work.

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