Effects of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) and Ankyrin 3 (ANK3) in Bipolar Disorder

Abstract

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Bipolar Disorder (BD) is a mental disorder with emotional highs (euphoria) and lows, diagnosed especially in teenage years and early adulthood, which can cause cyclings containing manic (hypomanic) episodes and major depressive episodes. Nowadays, the suicide death rate of BD increases dramatically, thus BD has attracted more attention of society.

So far, numerous studies have argued that it is heavily influenced by genetics, and BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor) and ANK3 (Ankyrin 3) are regarded as the most important risk factors to BD susceptibility. Furthermore, BDNF and ANK3 both play a key role in central nervous system, which means a small mutation or change of them will induce some significant consequences.

This article summarizes some researches about the association between BDNF and BD and its typical rapid cycling, as well as the potential effects of ANK3’s cis-regulation and its variants. In addition, it introduces some information about how cis-regulation of ANK3 affects the susceptibility of BD and how some remarkable variants of ANK3 may contribute to BD. But also noteworthy is the fact that existing research results are far from enough, and there are still a great deal of effort that should be devoted to figure out the exact mechanism of BD, which must be beneficial for human health and improvement for relevant treatment and medicine.