Increased expression of BDNF transcript with exon VI in hippocampi of patients with pharmaco-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy.

Abstract A putative role of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in epilepsy has emerged from in vitro and animal models, but few studies have analyzed human samples. We assessed the BDNF expression of transcripts with exons I (BDNFI), II (BDNFII), IV (BDNFIV) and VI (BDNFVI) and methylation levels of promoters 4 and 6 in the hippocampi of patients with pharmaco-resistant temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) ( n  = 24). Hippocampal sclerosis (HS) and pre-surgical pharmacological treatment were considered as clinical independent variables. A statistical significant increase for the BDNFVI ( p n  = 8). BDNFVI was also increased in anxiety/depression TLE ( N  = 4) when compared to autopsies or to the remaining group of patients ( p N  = 3) was associated to a decrease in BDNFVI expression ( p