Abstract
It has been suggested that dysregulation of hormones is associated with schizophrenia (SCZ). This study aimed to measure the serum levels of progesterone and testosterone in 125 SCZ patients at different stages of treatment and 96 healthy control (HC) subjects. Our results showed that first-episode drug-free SCZ patients had significantly increased testosterone levels when compared with HC subjects, and chronic medication, but not short-term medication, further increased the serum testosterone levels in the patients. Further analysis suggested that the sex of the patients did not affect testosterone levels. In contrast, serum progesterone levels did not show significant differences between first-episode, drug-free SCZ patients and controls, and the antipsychotics increased progesterone levels in the male SCZ patients, but not female patients. Interestingly, our analyses demonstrated that the serum progesterone levels were negatively correlated with PANSS total score and PNASS positive score, suggesting a correlation between blood hormone levels and disease severity in SCZ patients. Taken together, our data showed differential changes in serum testosterone and progesterone levels in SCZ patients with or without antipsychotics, and our results suggest that increased sex hormone levels may be a defensive response to protect the human body under stress.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank all the patients and controls for providing blood samples.
Funding
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (82071676, 81703492) and the High-Level Hospital Development Program for the Foshan “Climbing” Project.
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XSL and YC conceived and designed the study; WH, YHL, and XXL performed the experiments; HC and ZFL extracted serum samples; WH, SQH, and XXL did statistical analyses. YC drafted the manuscript with critical revisions from all the authors.
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All procedures used in this study were approved by the Ethics Committee of the Third People’s Hospital of Foshan and performed in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments. All individuals participated voluntarily in this study, and informed consent was obtained and signed.
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Huang, W., Li, YH., Huang, SQ. et al. Serum Progesterone and Testosterone Levels in Schizophrenia Patients at Different Stages of Treatment. J Mol Neurosci 71, 1168–1173 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12031-020-01739-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12031-020-01739-w