Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, China; National Health Commission Key Laboratory of Diagnosis and Treatment on Brain Functional Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400016, China.
Department of Infectious Diseases, Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology for Infectious Diseases, Ministry of Education, Institute for Viral Hepatitis, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400010, China; Lab of Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering, Department of Histology and Embryology, Chongqing 400016, China.
J Affect Disord. 2024 Jan 15;345:252-261. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2023.10.129. Epub 2023 Oct 27.
Recent genome-wide association studies on major depressive disorder (MDD) have indicated the involvement of LRFN5 and OLFM4; however, the expression levels and roles of these molecules in MDD remain unclear. The present study aimed to determine the serum levels of TCF4 and RBFOX1 in patients with MDD and to investigate whether these molecules could be used as biomarkers for MDD diagnosis.
The study included 99 drug-naïve MDD patients, 90 drug-treated MDD patients, and 81 healthy controls (HCs). Serum TCF4 and RBFOX1 levels were measured by ELISA. Pearson's correlation analysis was conducted to determine the association between TCF4/RBFOX1 and clinical variables. Linear support vector machine classifier was used to evaluate the diagnostic capabilities of TCF4 and RBFOX1.
Serum TCF4 and RBFOX1 levels were substantially higher in MDD patients than in HCs and significantly lower in drug-treated MDD patients than in drug-naïve MDD patients. Moreover, serum TCF4 and RBFOX1 levels were associated with the Hamilton Depression Scale score, duration of illness, serum lipids levels, and hepatic function. Thus, both these molecules showed potential as biomarkers for MDD. TCF4 and RBFOX1 combination exhibited a higher diagnostic performance, with the mean area under the curve values of 0.9861 and 0.9936 in the training and testing sets, respectively.
Small sample size and investigation of only the peripheral nervous system.
TCF4 and RBFOX1 may be involved in the pathogenesis of MDD, and their combination may serve as a diagnostic biomarker panel for MDD.
最近的重度抑郁症（MDD）全基因组关联研究表明 LRFN5 和 OLFM4 参与其中；然而，这些分子在 MDD 中的表达水平和作用仍不清楚。本研究旨在确定 MDD 患者血清中 TCF4 和 RBFOX1 的水平，并探讨这些分子是否可作为 MDD 诊断的生物标志物。
本研究纳入了 99 例未经药物治疗的 MDD 患者、90 例药物治疗的 MDD 患者和 81 例健康对照者（HCs）。采用 ELISA 法测定血清 TCF4 和 RBFOX1 水平。采用 Pearson 相关分析来确定 TCF4/RBFOX1 与临床变量之间的关系。采用线性支持向量机分类器来评估 TCF4 和 RBFOX1 的诊断能力。
MDD 患者的血清 TCF4 和 RBFOX1 水平明显高于 HCs，药物治疗的 MDD 患者的血清 TCF4 和 RBFOX1 水平明显低于未经药物治疗的 MDD 患者。此外，血清 TCF4 和 RBFOX1 水平与汉密尔顿抑郁量表评分、病程、血清脂质水平和肝功能相关。因此，这两种分子均具有作为 MDD 生物标志物的潜力。TCF4 和 RBFOX1 联合具有更高的诊断性能，在训练集和测试集中的曲线下面积平均值分别为 0.9861 和 0.9936。
样本量小，仅研究了外周神经系统。
TCF4 和 RBFOX1 可能参与了 MDD 的发病机制，其联合可能作为 MDD 的诊断生物标志物组合。
