Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, in collaboration with Dutch scientists, have found that some metabolites may be predictive markers for people at risk for dementia. major recurrent depression order.
The findings were published in the online journal Translational Psychiatry.
“This is evidence for a mitochondrial nexus at the heart of depression,” said lead author Robert K. Naviaux, MD, PhD, professor of medicine, pediatrics and pathology at UC San Diego School of Medicine.
“It’s a small study, but the first one that shows the ability to use metabolic markers as predictive clinical indicators of patients who are most at risk – and more at risk. low – for recurrent strokes of major depressive symptoms, “Naviaux said.
Recurrent depression (in non-clerical terms, clinical depression) is a mood disorder characterized by a combination of several symptoms: feelings of sadness or despair, anger or frustration, loss of interest, sleep disturbances, anxiety, delay or difficulty thinking, suicidal thoughts and unexplained physical problems, such as back pain or headaches.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is among the most common mental illnesses in the United States, with an estimated life frequency of 20.6 percent, with one in five Americans suffering from at least one event during their lifetime. For patients with recurrent MDD (rMDD), the risk of five-year recurrence is up to 80 percent.
For their study, Naviaux and colleagues in the Netherlands recruited 68 subjects (45 females, 23 males) with rMDD who were in antidepressant-free relief and 59 controls by age and sex. After collecting blood from exacerbated patients, the patients were followed preoperatively for two and a half years.
Results showed that a metabolic signature found when patients were well predicted which patients were most likely to go up to two and a half years in the future. The accuracy of this forecast was more than 90 percent. An analysis of the most predictable chemicals found that they belonged to specific types of lipids (fats that contained eicosanoids and sphingolipids) and purines.
Purines are made from molecules, such as ATP and ADP – the main chemicals used for energy storage in cells, but which also play a role in communication that cells undergo, called purinergic signals .
The researchers found that, in subjects with rMDD, changes in specific metabolites in six metabolic pathways reversed fundamental changes in important cell functions.
“The basic biochemical signature findings in rMDD revealed a retrospective submitted by confirmed patients in addition to healthy controls,” Naviaux said.
“These differences are not visible through routine clinical evaluation, but they do suggest that the use of metabolomics – the biological study of metabolites – could be a new tool for predicting which of these patients. -injured to recurrence of depressive symptoms, “Naviaux said.
The authors noted that their initial results require confirmation in a larger study of at least 198 females and 198 males (99 cases and 99 controls each).
This story was published from a wire group group with no text changes. Only the headline has changed.
