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Discovery and Validation of Plasma Biomarkers for Major Depressive Disorder Classification Based on Liquid Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry
journal contribution
posted on 2015-05-01, 00:00 authored by Xinyu Liu, Peng Zheng, Xinjie Zhao, Yuqing Zhang, Chunxiu Hu, Jia Li, Jieyu Zhao, Jingjing Zhou, Peng Xie, Guowang XuMajor depressive disorder (MDD) is
a debilitating mental disease
with a pronounced impact on the quality of life of many people; however,
it is still difficult to diagnose MDD accurately. In this study, a
nontargeted metabolomics approach based on ultra-high-performance
liquid chromatography equipped with quadrupole time-of-flight mass
spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF/MS) was used to find the differential metabolites
in plasma samples from patients with MDD and healthy controls. Furthermore,
a validation analysis focusing on the differential metabolites was
performed in another batch of samples using a targeted approach based
on the dynamic multiple reactions monitoring method. Levels of acyl
carnitines, ether lipids, and tryptophan pronouncedly decreased, whereas
LPCs, LPEs, and PEs markedly increased in MDD subjects as compared
with the healthy controls. Disturbed pathways, mainly located in acyl
carnitine metabolism, lipid metabolism, and tryptophan metabolism,
were clearly brought to light in MDD subjects. The binary logistic
regression result showed that carnitine C10:1, PE-O 36:5, LPE 18:1
sn-2, and tryptophan can be used as a combinational biomarker to distinguish
not only moderate but also severe MDD from healthy control with good
sensitivity and specificity. Our findings, on one hand, provide critical
insight into the pathological mechanism of MDD and, on the other hand,
supply a combinational biomarker to aid the diagnosis of MDD in clinical
usage.