BDNF and neurodegenerative disease: BDNF has been implicated in various disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases[39,40] and cardiac hypertrophy.[41] Under these conditions, BDNF expression is reduced, potentially via 2 mechanisms: first, increased methylation of the BDNF promoter leads to transcriptional repression, and second, specific microRNAs (such as miR-212/132) bind more frequently to BDNF mRNA, resulting in the downregulation of its expression.