Adaptation of Lipid Profiling in Depression Disease and Treatment: A Critical Review

Abstract

Major depressive disorder (MDD), also called depression, is a serious disease that impairs the quality of life of patients and has a high incidence, affecting approximately 3.8% of the world population. Its diagnosis is very subjective and is not supported by measurable biomarkers mainly due to the lack of biochemical markers. Recently, disturbance of lipid profiling has been recognized in MDD, in animal models of MDD or in depressed patients, which may contribute to unravel the etiology of the disease and find putative new biomarkers, for a diagnosis or for monitoring the disease and therapeutics outcomes. In this review, we provide an overview of current knowledge of lipidomics analysis, both in animal models of MDD (at the brain and plasma level) and in humans (in plasma and serum). Furthermore, studies of lipidomics analyses after antidepressant treatment in rodents (in brain, plasma, and serum), in primates (in the brain) and in humans (in plasma) were reviewed and give evidence that antidepressants seem to counteract the modification seen in lipids in MDD, giving some evidence that certain altered lipid profiles could be useful MDD biomarkers for future precision medicine.

Impact of St. John’s wort extract Ze 117 on stress induced changes in the lipidome of PBMC

“…Evidence for alterations in the lipid composition of brain tissue after antidepressant therapy has already been shown in several in vivo studies (Pinto et al 2022 ). Plasma (Pinto et al 2022 ) or blood cells such es erythrocytes (Edwards et al 1998 ) have therefore been used in clinical trials to monitor progression of major depression or antidepressant treatment effect. In the present experiments Ze 117 also showed a membrane rigidity-increasing effect in PBMC, counteracting a higher membrane fluidity after cortisol treatment.…”

“…While alterations in membrane lipid composition have been shown in several animal models of depression or in patients with MDD, only few studies exist that investigated the effect of antidepressant treatment on lipid profiles. Most of these studies were performed in rodents or primates treated with different classes of antidepressants (for review see Pinto et al 2022 ) and only very few data are available in humans. In a study on juvenile macaques long-term treatment with the antidepressant fluoxetine caused substantial lipidome alterations in the brain (Tkachev et al 2021 ).…”

The Metabolome-Wide Signature of Major Depressive Disorder

“…Thereby, lysophospholipids play a role in development of the nervous system, cancer growth and inflammation [ 34 ]. Reports on both rodent models and human plasma with small sample size (N<120) showed higher lysophospholipids in depression as compared to controls [ 35 – 38 ]. The lysophospholipids we identified are not well known, however two of the best-characterized lysophospholipids, lysophosphatidic acid and sphingosine-1-phosphate, are crucial in neurodegenerative diseases, especially in Alzheimer’s disease [ 39 ].…”

Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, Kynurenine Pathway, and Lipid-Profiling Alterations as Potential Animal Welfare Indicators in Dairy Cattle

“…While peripheral KP activation was lowest at the time of blood withdrawal in the cows kept in housing system C, the prolonged stress conditions due to daily intensive milk production (>40 kg/cow per day) and the stronger social competition may have been the cause of the increased IDO activity detected in the CNS, suggestive of a state of psychological stress induced in these cows [ 50 ]. Recently, disturbances in lipid profiling have also been recognized in MDD, in animal models of MDD, and in patients with depression [ 24 , 51 ]. The typical glycerophospholipids found in mammalian membranes are phosphatidylcolines (PCs) [ 52 ].…”

“…Recently, lipidomic approaches by liquid chromatography coupled to MS (LC-MS) and tandem MS (LC-MS/MS) have studied the lipidome from the brain and its subregions [ 20 , 21 ] in mice [ 22 ], as well as body fluids (e.g., plasma, serum, cerebrospinal fluid), to identify characteristic markers for the diagnosis of brain conditions and disorders such as MDD [ 23 ]. Previous studies have reported changes in the lipidome of the brain or the plasma of animal models of disease as well as in plasma and serum from patients with MDD [ 24 ].…”