Plasma fibrinogen: now also an antidepressant response marker?

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the leading causes of global disability. It is a risk factor for noncompliance with medical treatment, with about 40% of patients not responding to currently used antidepressant drugs. The identification and clinical implementation of biomarkers that can indicate the likelihood of treatment response are needed in order to predict which patients will benefit from an antidepressant drug. While analyzing the blood plasma proteome collected from MDD patients before the initiation of antidepressant medication, we observed different fibrinogen alpha (FGA) levels between drug responders and nonresponders. These results were replicated in a second set of patients. Our findings lend further support to a recently identified association between MDD and fibrinogen levels from a large-scale study.