Abstract
The neurobiology of suicidal behaviour, which constitutes one of the most serious problems both in psychiatry and general medical practice, still remains to a large degree unclear. As a result, scientists constantly look for new opportunities of explaining the causes underlying suicidality. In order to elucidate the biological changes occurring in the brains of the suicide victims, studies based on post-mortem brain tissue samples are increasingly being used. These studies employ different research methods to provide an insight into abnormalities in brain functioning on various levels, including gene and protein expression, neuroplasticity and neurotransmission, as well as many other areas. The aim of this paper to summarize the available data on the post-mortem studies, to provide an overview of main research directions and the most up-to-date findings, and to indicate the possibilities of further research in this field.
Highlights
Suicide is one of the leading causes of death globally for all ages
We concentrate on the most upto-date findings, we describe a number of the most important older studies, which have provided the basis for the more recent ones
The issue is further complicated by an considerable overlap between psychiatric disorders, all of which might alone be associated with certain neurobiological abnormalities, and suicide
Summary
Suicide is one of the leading causes of death globally for all ages. Every year, nearly one million people die from suicide according to WHO, 2013. The authors conclude that the expression of these three proteins in the PFC of suicide victims might indicate a possible existence of an intermitting component between glial function and suicidal behaviour They suggest that the serotonergic system can play such a role, especially because animal studies showed 5HTsensitive astrocytes from 5-HT-depleted regions of rat brain revealed up-regulation of GFAP synthesis [47]. Since dopamine-and-cAMP-regulated neuronal phosphoprotein (32 kDa) (DARPP-32) is expressed in brain regions receiving dopaminergic projections, including the PFC, and is implicated in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, Feldcamp et al [129] determined the DARPP-32 gene expression in suicide victims with schizophrenia They found a significant difference in gene expression levels between schizophrenia patients who died by suicide vs other causes of death, as well as the between the schizophrenia group and controls. No significant differences in genotypic distribution of any single SNP in the three genes in question were observed between the individuals who completed suicide and control groups Table 5
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