Prof. Dr. rer. med. Thomas Frodl

Beta-hydroxy-butyrate (BHB), a ketone body, is negatively associated with aggressive behavior. BHB is a metabolite and an active signaling substrate involved in epigenetic regulation of e.g., neurotrophic factor genes in the brain. Of the three main ketone bodies, acetone, acetoacetate and BHB, acetone is a very volatile compound, mainly eliminated through respiration, thus can be measured non-invasively in breath. A reduction of acetone in breath has been found to highly correlate with BHB in blood and be associated with symptom severity in schizophrenia (Jiang et al. 2022). Using MR spectroscopy, A08 aims to (1) identify whether acetone and other volatile organic compounds in breath are associated with aggression and acute threat processing in mental disorders and (2) to examine whether these breath markers are associated with direct metabolic brain correlates (like BHB, glutamate) and with the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) levels in plasma. In a translational approach, (3) we will test if supplementation of BHB reduces aggressive behavior in mice.

The central recruitment platform for collecting and curating a longitudinal dataset for studying individual aggression dynamics related to the neural, cognitive-emotional, neurobiological, psychopathological and environmental factors in patient groups.