Investigation of soluble N-cadherin (cadherin-2) levels in methamphetamine use disorder patients

Introduction: Methamphetamine use disorder has become a global public health problem, the use of which has become increasingly widespread in recent years. There are various assumptions about the mechanisms of methamphetamine-induced neurotoxicity, and disruption of the integrity of the Blood Brain Barrier is an important one of them. Cell Adhesion Molecules are a current issue in terms of their relationship with substance use disorder. The fact that various substances disrupt the integrity of the blood brain barrier is essential for the development of neurotoxicity due to these substances, and as mentioned, many factors are involved in this complex process, including CAM cleavage caused by MMP enzymes. CAMs are an important substrate of MMPs, and depending on the substance use, soluble forms of them can be detected in various tissues, including plasma, and N-cadherin as a CAM can be a potential biomarker and predictor in this regard. Materials and Methods: July November 2021 to Dec 2022, 48 volunteer patients and 42 healthy volunteers who were admitted to the Department of Mental Health and Diseases of Dicle University Faculty of Medicine Hospital, who were diagnosed with Methamphetamine Use Disorder according to the DSM-5 criteria, were included in the study after signing the informed consent form. After the participants signed the informed consent form, the sociodemographic data form, the Clinical Global Follow-up Scale (CGI), the Sheehan Disability Scale, the Substance use disorder recognition test (DUDIT) were applied. SPSS for the analysis of data 24. 0 statistical package program was used. Results: There were no statistically significant differences between the patient group and the control group in terms of average age. In our study, no significant differences were found between the patient and healthy control group in terms of alcohol use, place of birth, place of residence and marital status. There were significant differences between the two groups in terms of marriage duration, number of people living at home, smoking, education level, job status, number of children and economic status. When classified according to the degree of substance use disorder recognition test, it was seen that 9.7% of the patients were in the problematic use group and 81.9% were in the high-risk use group. Substance use disorder recognition test When the clinical characteristics of the patients were examined according to the risk status, it was found that there were significant differences between the Problematic Use group and the High-Risk Use group in terms of alcohol consumption, self-mutilation and violent behavior. It was observed that the Clinical Global Monitoring Scale scores were significantly lower in the Problematic Use group compared to the High-Risk Use group. Clinical Global Monitoring Scale-it was found that the severity of the disease was significantly lower in the Problematic Use group compared to the High-Risk Use group. Again, it was observed that the total Sheehan score was significantly lower in the Problematic Use group compared to the High-Risk Use group. It was observed that the serum N-Cadherin levels of the patient group were low compared to the control group, but there were no statistically significant differences between the groups. We did not detect a statistically significant correlation between the level of serum N-cadherin and the Clinical Global Impression scale and the Clinical Global Impression severity subscale, Sheehan test scale, Sheehan- family life, Sheehan - work life, Sheehan -social life subscale scores and the recognition of substance use disorders scale. In the correlation analysis performed in the patient group, there was no statistically significant correlation between age, age of onset of the disease, time elapsed after diagnosis, suicide history, number of hospitalizations, and serum N-Cadherin levels. In the evaluation of the demographic and personal characteristics of the patient group; the effects of variables such as education level, work status, socioeconomic level, violent behavior, self-harm, suicide attempt on N-Cadherin level were not found to be statistically significant. Only a weakly significant negative correlation was found between alcohol use and serum N-Cadherin. The level of N-Cadherin was statistically significantly higher in the group of patients who used alcohol compared to those who did not use alcohol. Conclusion: In our study, it was observed that serum N-cadherin levels were low in patients with methamphetamine use disorder compared to the control group, but there were no statistically significant differences between the groups. This may be due to fluctuating increases and decreases in N-cadherin levels, exclusion of psychosis and mood disorder comorbidity from the selected sample, non-compliance of the methamphetamine use in last two weeks requirement with the current molecule, small number of selected sample and consisting only of men. However, given that the assessment is cross-sectional, it may be necessary to support the results with longitudinal studies. Our study is important in that it is the first time that the molecule has been studied in this field. Keywords: methamphetamine, cell adhesion molecules, addiction, n-cadherin, cdh-2, cadherin-2