Journal of psychiatric researchApr 7, 2019

Blood levels of neurofilament light chain may help tell psychiatric disorders apart from a type of frontotemporal dementia with behavior changes

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Updated Mar 28, 2026

Abstract

Serum neurofilament light chain levels were significantly elevated in bvFTD patients compared to controls and those with psychiatric disorders.

No significant differences in serum neurofilament light chain levels were found among schizophrenia, depression, and bipolar disorder patients compared to controls.
Serum neurofilament light chain levels in bvFTD patients were significantly higher than in the control group.
Elevated serum neurofilament light chain levels in bvFTD patients were found in comparison to those with depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder.
The findings suggest that serum neurofilament light chain may serve as a biomarker to differentiate bvFTD from psychiatric disorders.

Simplified

The overlapping symptoms of behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and primary psychiatric disorders (such as depressive disorder, schizophrenia spectrum, and bipolar disorder) present a challenge for the differential diagnosis of bvFTD in middle and older-aged people. Neurofilaments are cytoskeletal proteins in the neurons, and several studies have reported elevated levels of neurofilament light chain (NfL) in cerebrospinal fluid of neurodegenerative as well as psychiatric disorders. The study aims to determine the utility of serum NfL levels as a biomarker to differentiate between bvFTD and psychiatric disorder. In our study, we investigated the levels of NfL in the serum of schizophrenia (n = 11), depression (n = 28), bipolar (n = 11), bvFTD (n = 20) patients and controls (n = 27) by single molecule array (Simoa) technology. The schizophrenia, depression and bipolar patients did not show significant changes in serum NfL levels in comparison to the control group (p > 0.99). The serum NfL levels were significantly elevated in bvFTD patients in comparison to the control cohort (p < 0.0001), depression (p < 0.0001), schizophrenia (p < 0.0002) and bipolar patients (p < 0.0083). We propose serum NfL as a biomarker to differentiate bvFTD from psychiatric disorders and to rule out neurodegeneration in the course of psychiatric disorders.

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Blood levels of neurofilament light chain may help tell psychiatric disorders apart from a type of frontotemporal dementia with behavior changes

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