Citation

He S, Liu X, Jiang K, Peng D, Hong W, Fang Y, Qian Y, Yu S, Li H. J. Psychiatr. Res. 2016; 78: 65-71.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, PR China; Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, PR China; Institution of Drug Clinical Trials, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, PR China. Electronic address: lhlh_5@163.com.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jpsychires.2016.03.015

PMID

27078210

Abstract

Recently, increasing evidence has indicated that dysfunction of microRNA-124 (miR-124) might be involved in the pathophysiology and treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD) in some animal models of depression. However, the role of miR-124 in MDD patients remains unclear. The objective of this study was to investigate whether the miR-124 expression levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were associated with MDD and to evaluate the effects of antidepressant treatment on miR-124 levels. Quantitative real-time PCR was applied to detect miR-124 expression in 32 pre- and post-treatment MDD patients and 30 healthy controls. Our results showed that expression levels of miR-124 from PBMCs in MDD patients were significantly higher than those in healthy controls (p < 0.001), and that the area under the curve of miR-124 from ROC analysis was 0.762 with a sensitivity of 83.33% and specificity of 66.67% in distinguishing MDD patients from healthy controls. In addition, the expression levels of miR-124 were significantly down-regulated after eight weeks of treatment (p < 0.001). MiRNA target gene prediction and functional annotation analysis indicated that altered miR-124 was involved in affecting some important biological processes and pathways related to MDD. These results provide new information on miR-124 involvement in the biological alterations of MDD and in antidepressant effects.

Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en