A quantitative immunohistochemical study of astrocytes in the entorhinal cortex in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression: absence of significant astrocytosis

Abstract

A number of macroscopic changes have been reported in the temporal lobe in schizophrenia. We have evaluated the density of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP)-positive astrocytes in cortical layers 2 through 6 in the intermediate subarea of entorhinal cortex in two cohorts: the first, 15 cases, made up of schizophrenic ( n = 7) and normal nonpsychiatric control subjects ( n = 8), and the second, 56 cases, composed of schizophrenic ( n = 14), bipolar disorder ( n = 13), major depressive ( n = 14) and normal control subjects ( n = 15). No significant difference in density of GFAP-positive astrocytes was detected between the psychiatric diagnostic groups and the normal controls in either of the two cohorts. In both cohorts there was a positive correlation between increasing age and astrocytic density which reached statistical significance in only the larger cohort ( r = 0.38, p = 0.004). Our results find no evidence for astrocytosis in the entorhinal cortex in several mental illnesses. Although other studies have reported macroscopic and other structural abnormalities in this region, we have not detected astrocytic proliferation, which is a typical hallmark of atrophy and/or progressive neuronal loss.