Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia have multiple clinical and genetic features in common, including shared risk associated with overlapping susceptibility loci in immune-related genes. Higher activity of the nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) transcription factor complex, which regulates the transcription of multiple immune markers, has been reported to contribute to immune activation in the prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia. These findings suggest the hypothesis that elevated NF-κB activity is present in the prefrontal cortex in bipolar disorder in a manner similar to that seen in schizophrenia. Therefore, we quantified levels of NF-κB-related mRNAs in the prefrontal cortex of 35 matched pairs of bipolar disorder and unaffected comparison subjects using quantitative PCR. We found that transcript levels were higher in the prefrontal cortex of bipolar disorder subjects for several NF-κB family members, NF-κB activation receptors, and NF-κB-regulated mRNAs, and were lower for an NF-κB inhibitor. Transcript levels for NF-κB family members, NF-κB activation receptors, and NF-κB-regulated mRNAs levels were also highly correlated with each other. This pattern of elevated transcript levels for NF-κB-related markers in bipolar disorder is similar to that previously reported in schizophrenia, suggesting that cortical immune activation is a shared pathophysiological feature between the two disorders.

双相情感障碍和精神分裂症具有多个共同的临床和遗传特征，包括与免疫相关基因中重叠易感基因座相关的共同风险。据报道，核因子-κB (NF-κB) 转录因子复合物的较高活性有助于精神分裂症患者前额皮质的免疫激活，该复合物调节多种免疫标记物的转录。这些发现表明，双相情感障碍患者的前额皮质中 NF-κB 活性升高的情况与精神分裂症患者的情况类似。因此，我们使用定量 PCR 定量了 35 对双相情感障碍患者和未受影响的对照受试者前额皮质中 NF-κB 相关 mRNA 的水平。我们发现，双相情感障碍受试者前额皮质中的几种 NF-κB 家族成员、NF-κB 激活受体和 NF-κB 调节 mRNA 的转录物水平较高，而 NF-κB 抑制剂的转录物水平较低。 NF-κB 家族成员、NF-κB 激活受体和 NF-κB 调节的 mRNA 水平的转录水平也彼此高度相关。双相情感障碍中 NF-κB 相关标记物转录水平升高的模式与之前报道的精神分裂症相似，表明皮质免疫激活是这两种疾病共有的病理生理学特征。