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Objective: In this study, we propose a voice index to identify healthy individuals, patients with bipolar disorder, and patients with major depressive disorder using polytomous logistic regression analysis.Methods: Voice features were extracted from voices of healthy individuals and patients with mental disease. Polytomous logistic regression analysis was performed for some voice features.Results: With the prediction model obtained using the analysis, we identified subject groups and were able to classify subjects into three groups with 90.79% accuracy.Conclusion: These results show that the proposed index may be used as a new evaluation index to identify depression.

A nucleosidic medicine, 1-(3-C-ethynyl-β-D-ribo-pentofuranosyl)cytosine [3'-ethynylcytidine (ECyd)], is a potent inhibitor of RNA polymerase I and shows anticancer activity to various human solid tumors in vitro and in vivo. ECyd is phosphorylated to 3'-ethyntlcytidine 5'-monophosphate by uridine/cytidine kinase 2 (UCK2) and subsequently further to diphosphate and triphosphate (3'-ethyntlcytidine 5'-diphosphate, 3'-ethyntlcytidine 5'-triphosphate). 3'-Ethyntlcytidine 5'-triphosphate is an active metabolite that can inhibit RNA polymerase I competitively, causing cancer cell death. Here, to identify the UCK2 mutation for detecting responder or nonresponder to ECyd, we investigated the relationship between point mutation of the UCK2 gene and response to ECyd in various human solid tumors. We identified several functional point mutations including the splice-site mutation of the UCK2 gene IVS5+5 G>A. In addition, we found that the IVS5+5 G>A variant generates an aberrant mRNA transcript, namely, truncated mRNA was produced and normal mRNA levels were markedly decreased in the ECyd-resistant cancer cell line HT1080. We concluded that these findings strongly suggest that the IVS5+5 G>A variant would affect the expression level of the UCK2 transcript, resulting in decreased sensitivity to ECyd.

Background We developed a system for monitoring mental health using voice data from daily phone calls, termed Mind Monitoring System (MIMOSYS), by implementing a method for estimating mental health status from voice data. Objective The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of this system for detecting depressive states and monitoring stress-induced mental changes. Methods We opened our system to the public in the form of a prospective study in which data were collected over 2 years from a large, unspecified sample of users. We used these data to analyze the relationships between the rate of continued use, the men-to-women ratio, and existing psychological tests for this system over the study duration. Moreover, we analyzed changes in mental data over time under stress from particular life events. Results The system had a high rate of continued use. Voice indicators showed that women have more depressive tendencies than men, matching the rate of depression in Japan. The system’s voice indicators and the scores on classical psychological tests were correlated. We confirmed deteriorating mental health for users in areas affected by major earthquakes in Japan around the time of the earthquakes. Conclusions The results suggest that although this system is insufficient for detecting depression, it may be effective for monitoring changes in mental health due to stress. The greatest feature of our system is mental health monitoring, which is most effectively accomplished by performing long-term time-series analysis of the acquired data considering the user’s life events. Such a system can improve the implementation of patient interventions by evaluating objective data along with life events.

Recently, the relationship between emotional arousal and depression has been studied. Focusing on this relationship, we first developed an arousal level voice index (ALVI) to measure arousal levels using the Interactive Emotional Dyadic Motion Capture database. Then, we calculated ALVI from the voices of depressed patients from two hospitals (Ginza Taimei Clinic (H1) and National Defense Medical College hospital (H2)) and compared them with the severity of depression as measured by the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D). Depending on the HAM-D score, the datasets were classified into a no depression (HAM-D < 8) and a depression group (HAM-D ≥ 8) for each hospital. A comparison of the mean ALVI between the groups was performed using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test and a significant difference at the level of 10% (p = 0.094) at H1 and 1% (p = 0.0038) at H2 was determined. The area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic was 0.66 when categorizing between the two groups for H1, and the AUC for H2 was 0.70. The relationship between arousal level and depression severity was indirectly suggested via the ALVI.