Biopsychology, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Transl Psychiatry. 2022 Apr 8;12(1):150. doi: 10.1038/s41398-022-01911-3.
Pathophysiological landmarks of depressive disorders are chronic low-grade inflammation and elevated glucocorticoid output. Both can potentially interfere with cytoskeleton organization, cell membrane bending and cell function, suggesting altered cell morpho-rheological properties like cell deformability and other cell mechanical features in depressive disorders. We performed a cross-sectional case-control study using the image-based morpho-rheological characterization of unmanipulated blood samples facilitating real-time deformability cytometry (RT-DC). Sixty-nine pre-screened individuals at high risk for depressive disorders and 70 matched healthy controls were included and clinically evaluated by Composite International Diagnostic Interview leading to lifetime and 12-month diagnoses. Facilitating deep learning on blood cell images, major blood cell types were classified and morpho-rheological parameters such as cell size and cell deformability of every individual cell was quantified. We found peripheral blood cells to be more deformable in patients with depressive disorders compared to controls, while cell size was not affected. Lifetime persistent depressive disorder was associated with increased cell deformability in monocytes and neutrophils, while in 12-month persistent depressive disorder erythrocytes deformed more. Lymphocytes were more deformable in 12-month major depressive disorder, while for lifetime major depressive disorder no differences could be identified. After correction for multiple testing, only associations for lifetime persistent depressive disorder remained significant. This is the first study analyzing morpho-rheological properties of entire blood cells and highlighting depressive disorders and in particular persistent depressive disorders to be associated with increased blood cell deformability. While all major blood cells tend to be more deformable, lymphocytes, monocytes, and neutrophils are mostly affected. This indicates that immune cell mechanical changes occur in depressive disorders, which might be predictive of persistent immune response.
抑郁障碍的病理生理标志是慢性低度炎症和糖皮质激素水平升高。这两者都可能干扰细胞骨架组织、细胞膜弯曲和细胞功能，表明抑郁障碍中细胞形态流变特性发生了改变，如细胞变形性和其他细胞力学特征。我们使用基于图像的未经处理的血液样本形态流变特性分析，进行了一项横断面病例对照研究，该分析有利于实时变形细胞术（RT-DC）。我们纳入了 69 名有抑郁障碍高风险的预先筛选个体和 70 名匹配的健康对照，并通过复合国际诊断访谈进行临床评估，得出终生和 12 个月的诊断。通过对血细胞图像进行深度学习，我们对主要血细胞类型进行分类，并对每个个体细胞的形态流变参数（如细胞大小和细胞变形性）进行量化。我们发现与对照组相比，患有抑郁障碍的患者外周血细胞的变形能力更高，而细胞大小不受影响。终生持续性抑郁障碍与单核细胞和中性粒细胞的细胞变形能力增加有关，而在 12 个月持续性抑郁障碍中，红细胞变形能力增加。在 12 个月的重度抑郁症中，淋巴细胞的变形能力更强，而在终生重度抑郁症中则没有差异。经过多次测试校正后，只有终生持续性抑郁障碍的相关性仍然显著。这是第一项分析整个血细胞形态流变特性的研究，并强调抑郁障碍，特别是持续性抑郁障碍与增加的血细胞变形能力有关。虽然所有主要的血细胞都趋于变形能力更高，但淋巴细胞、单核细胞和中性粒细胞受影响最大。这表明在抑郁障碍中发生了免疫细胞的力学变化，这可能是持续免疫反应的预测指标。
