Journal Article DZNE-2025-00766

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Neural autoantibodies in psychiatric disorders are associated with antibodies against viral pathogens: a retrospective study of 619 patients.

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2025
Springer Wien [u.a.]

Journal of neural transmission 132(7), 1063 - 1074 () [10.1007/s00702-025-02943-x]

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Abstract: A history of viral infection has been associated with a higher risk for psychiatric disorders. One potential underlying mechanism is that antiviral immunological responses could trigger cross-reactivity between viral and neural antigens, which would raise the co-occurrence of antiviral antibodies and anti-neural autoantibodies. We studied 619 patients' psychiatric diagnoses from the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany. Anti-neural autoantibodies and antiviral antibody specific indices were measured in serum and/or cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from all patients. Among these 619 patients, 115 tested positive for serum and/or CSF neural autoantibodies (18.6%), with the most often identified autoantibodies being anti-GAD65 in serum (2.2%) and CSF (1.6%), and anti-NMDA in serum (0.6%) and CSF (1.3%). The three main diagnostic groups presenting neural autoantibodies were patients with organic psychiatric disorders including dementia (81 of 377; 21.7%), those with psychotic disorders (9 of 66; 13.6%), and patients with affective disorders (19 of 138; 13.9%). Logistic regression analysis revealed a significant association between the varicella zoster virus (VZV) antibody-specific index and autoantibody positivity in patients with all diagnoses (F00-F79) (p < 0.005). Furthermore, the rubella antibody-specific index proved to be significantly associated with neural autoantibody positivity (p < 0.001) across all patients (F00-F79), and in those with affective disorders (p < 0.01). Our results show that VZV and rubella antiviral antibodies are associated with a higher propensity to develop anti-neural autoantibodies, suggesting that the known association between viral infection and later developing psychiatric disorders may be partly attributable to the development of anti-neural autoimmunity.

Keyword(s): Humans (MeSH) ; Autoantibodies: blood (MeSH) ; Autoantibodies: cerebrospinal fluid (MeSH) ; Male (MeSH) ; Female (MeSH) ; Mental Disorders: immunology (MeSH) ; Mental Disorders: blood (MeSH) ; Mental Disorders: cerebrospinal fluid (MeSH) ; Mental Disorders: virology (MeSH) ; Middle Aged (MeSH) ; Retrospective Studies (MeSH) ; Adult (MeSH) ; Aged (MeSH) ; Antibodies, Viral: blood (MeSH) ; Antibodies, Viral: cerebrospinal fluid (MeSH) ; Glutamate Decarboxylase: immunology (MeSH) ; Young Adult (MeSH) ; Virus Diseases: immunology (MeSH) ; Autoantibodies ; Autoimmunity ; Psychiatric disorder ; Viral antibody indices ; Autoantibodies ; Antibodies, Viral ; Glutamate Decarboxylase

Classification:

Contributing Institute(s):
  1. Epigenetics and Systems Medicine in Neurodegenerative Diseases (AG Fischer)
  2. Molecular biomarkers for predictive diagnostics of neurodegenerative diseases (AG Wiltfang)
Research Program(s):
  1. 353 - Clinical and Health Care Research (POF4-353) (POF4-353)

Appears in the scientific report 2025
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Medline ; Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 4.0 ; OpenAccess ; BIOSIS Previews ; Biological Abstracts ; Clarivate Analytics Master Journal List ; Current Contents - Life Sciences ; DEAL Springer ; Ebsco Academic Search ; Essential Science Indicators ; IF < 5 ; JCR ; SCOPUS ; Science Citation Index Expanded ; Web of Science Core Collection
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Document types > Articles > Journal Article
Institute Collections > GÖ DZNE > GÖ DZNE-AG Wiltfang
Institute Collections > GÖ DZNE > GÖ DZNE-AG Fischer
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 Record created 2025-07-03, last modified 2025-07-20