Jiang Yuanliang, Qin Mengchang, Teng Teng, Li Xuemei, Yu Ying, Wang Jie, Wu Hongyan, He Yuqian, Zhou Xinyu, Xie Peng
Department of Psychiatry, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China.
National Health Commission (NHC) Key Laboratory of Diagnosis and Treatment on Brain Functional Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China.
Front Psychiatry. 2022 Jul 14;13:929207. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.929207. eCollection 2022.
Children and adolescents are at a high risk of major depressive disorder (MDD) with known sex differences in epidemiology. However, there are currently no objective laboratory-based sex-specific biomarkers available to support the diagnoses of male and female patients with MDD.
Here, a male set of 42 cases and 27 healthy controls (HCs) and a female set of 42 cases and 22 HCs were recruited. This study investigated the sex differences of plasma metabolite biomarkers in young patients with MDD by the application of ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography equipped with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry.
The metabolic profiles showed clear separations in both male and female sets. In total, this study identified 57 male-related and 53 female-related differential metabolites. Compared with HCs, both male and female subjects with MDD displayed four significantly altered pathways. Notably, biliverdin was selected as an independent diagnostic male-specific biomarker with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.966, and phosphatidylcholine (10:0/14:1) was selected as a female-specific biomarker, achieving an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.957.
This metabolomics study may aid in the development of a plasma-based test for the diagnosis of male and female children and adolescents with MDD, as well as give new insight into the pathophysiology of sex differences in children and adolescents with MDD.
儿童和青少年患重度抑郁症（MDD）的风险很高，且在流行病学上存在已知的性别差异。然而，目前尚无基于实验室的客观性别特异性生物标志物可用于支持男性和女性MDD患者的诊断。
本研究招募了一组42例男性患者和27名健康对照（HC），以及一组42例女性患者和22名HC。本研究通过应用配备四极杆飞行时间质谱仪的超高效液相色谱法，调查了年轻MDD患者血浆代谢物生物标志物的性别差异。
代谢谱在男性和女性组中均显示出明显的分离。本研究共鉴定出57种与男性相关和53种与女性相关的差异代谢物。与HC相比，男性和女性MDD患者均显示出四条显著改变的途径。值得注意的是，胆绿素被选为独立的诊断男性特异性生物标志物，其受试者工作特征曲线下面积为0.966，磷脂酰胆碱（10:0/14:1）被选为女性特异性生物标志物，曲线下面积（AUC）为0.957。
这项代谢组学研究可能有助于开发一种基于血浆的检测方法，用于诊断男性和女性儿童及青少年的MDD，并为MDD儿童及青少年性别差异的病理生理学提供新的见解。
