Differential gene expression in patients with subsyndromal symptomatic depression and major depressive disorder

Abstract

BackgroundSubsyndromal symptomatic depression (SSD) is a subtype of subthreshold depressive and can lead to significant psychosocial functional impairment. Although the pathogenesis of major depressive disorder (MDD) and SSD still remains poorly understood, a set of studies have found that many same genetic factors play important roles in the etiology of these two disorders. Nowadays, the differential gene expression between MDD and SSD is still unknown. In our previous study, we compared the expression profile and made the classification with the leukocytes by using whole-genome cRNA microarrays among drug-free first-episode subjects with SSD, MDD and matched healthy controls (8 subjects in each group), and finally determined 48 gene expression signatures. Based on these findings, we further clarify whether these genes mRNA was different expressed in peripheral blood in patients with SSD, MDD and healthy controls (60 subjects respectively)MethodWith the help of the quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), we gained gene relative expression levels among the three groups.ResultsWe found that there are three of the forty eight co-regulated genes had differential expression in peripheral blood among the three groups, which are CD84, STRN, CTNS gene (F = 3.528, p = 0.034; F = 3.382, p = 0.039; F = 3.801, p = 0.026, respectively) while there were no significant differences for other genes.ConclusionCD84, STRN, CTNS gene may have significant value for performing diagnostic functions and classifying SSD, MDD and healthy controls.

Long-term antibiotic use during early life and risks to mental traits: an observational study and gene–environment-wide interaction study in UK Biobank cohort

“…Previous study reported that proteins of the STRN family are enriched in dendritic spines and are principally expressed in neurons [53]. STRN had differential expression in peripheral blood among the patients with major depressive disorder, subsyndromal symptomatic depression, and healthy controls [54]. Another significant result is SLC8A1-AS1 in the current study.…”

Brain differential gene expression and blood cross-validation of a molecular signature of patients with major depressive disorder

“…Ideally, samples would come from the same subject collected at the same time ( Sullivan et al ., 2006 ; Leday et al ., 2018 ). This would reduce variation in clinical characteristics that could impact expression ( Ciobanu et al ., 2016 ; Yang et al ., 2017 ).…”

Gene expression in peripheral blood in treatment-free major depression

“…It is also important that there is noticeable variability in the methodology for the quantification of gene expression in studies of psychiatric samples published over the last 2 years. When considering only studies that reported their method of gene expression quantification, the most commonly used method was the comparative 2 -ΔΔCt method, but there were variations in the data normalisation process: use of one reference gene (Amidfar et al, 2017;Bobińska, Gałecka, et al, 2017;Bobińska, Mossakowska-Wójcik, et al, 2017;Liu et al, 2017;Yang et al, 2017;Fries et al, 2017;Gałecka et al, 2017Gałecka et al, , 2018Ghafelehbashi et al, 2017;Hoseth et al, 2017;Hung et al, 2017;Akcan et al, 2018;Sao et al, 2018), relativity to their own endogenous control (Doolin et al, 2017), two reference genes (Roy et al, 2017), and geometric mean of two reference genes (Chau et al, 2018). This source of variability may difficult the interpretation (and comparison) of the results of gene expression studies of psychiatric conditions; moreover, it impedes the realisation of meta-analysis.…”