Department of Neurosciences and Mental Health, Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Via F. Sforza 35, Milan 20122, Italy.
Department of Neurosciences and Mental Health, Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Via F. Sforza 35, Milan 20122, Italy; Department of Pathophysiology and Transplantation, University of Milan, Milan, Italy.
J Affect Disord. 2020 Apr 1;266:802-809. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2020.02.036. Epub 2020 Feb 20.
Melancholic depression (MD) is a subtype of Major Depression associated with more clinical severity and poorer prognosis that non-melancholic depression (NMD). The differentiation between depression subtypes is still clinical, although the identification of specific biomarkers could be useful for diagnosis and the development of new treatments. Purpose of the present manuscript is to review the biomarkers that have been associated with MD.
We performed a bibliographic research on the main databases (PubMed, Embase, PsycInfo, Isi Web of Knowledge, Medscape, The Cochrane Library), in order to find studies that proposed biological markers for melancholic depression. A total of 14 studies met our inclusion criteria.
Most of studies focused on immune dysregulation. Subjects with MD show biological abnormalities than healthy controls (HC). MD might be characterized by specific biological changes and it could be associated to more severe abnormalities with respect to NMD; however especially about this latter point the available data are preliminary.
Most available data have not been replicated; the studies focused on different biomarkers. In addition, many articles report results on a limited sample size.
Melancholic depression is a subtype of major depression that seems to be associated with specific alterations of different biological systems. Future studies with larger sample can confirm the results and hypothesis presented in this review.
忧郁性抑郁症（MD）是一种与更严重的临床症状和预后较差相关的重度抑郁症的亚型，而非忧郁性抑郁症（NMD）。尽管确定特定的生物标志物对于诊断和开发新的治疗方法可能有用，但抑郁症亚型的区分仍然是临床的。
本研究旨在回顾与 MD 相关的生物标志物。
我们在主要数据库（PubMed、Embase、PsycInfo、Isi Web of Knowledge、Medscape、The Cochrane Library）上进行了文献检索，以寻找提出用于忧郁性抑郁症的生物标志物的研究。共有 14 项研究符合我们的纳入标准。
大多数研究都集中在免疫失调上。与健康对照组（HC）相比，MD 患者表现出生物学异常。MD 可能具有特定的生物学变化，与 NMD 相比，可能与更严重的异常相关；然而，关于后者，现有数据尚属初步。
大多数可用数据尚未得到复制；研究关注不同的生物标志物。此外，许多文章仅报告了有限样本量的结果。
忧郁性抑郁症是一种与不同生物系统的特定改变相关的重度抑郁症亚型。未来更大样本量的研究可以证实本综述中提出的结果和假设。
