Citation

Duan K, Mayer AR, Shaff NA, Chen J, Lin D, Calhoun VD, Jensen DM, Liu J. Clin. Epigenetics 2021; 13(1): 140.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group - BMC)

DOI

10.1186/s13148-021-01128-z

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Major depression has been recognized as the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric complication of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Moreover, major depression is associated with poor outcomes following mTBI; however, the underlying biological mechanisms of this are largely unknown. Recently, genomic and epigenetic factors have been increasingly implicated in the recovery following TBI.

RESULTS: This study leveraged DNA methylation within the major depression pathway, along with demographic and behavior measures (features used in the clinical model) to predict post-concussive symptom burden and quality of life four-month post-injury in a cohort of 110 pediatric mTBI patients and 87 age-matched healthy controls. The results demonstrated that including DNA methylation markers in the major depression pathway improved the prediction accuracy for quality of life but not persistent post-concussive symptom burden. Specifically, the prediction accuracy (i.e., the correlation between the predicted value and observed value) of quality of life was improved from 0.59 (p = 1.20 × 10(-3)) (clinical model) to 0.71 (p = 3.89 × 10(-5)); the identified cytosine-phosphate-guanine sites were mainly in the open sea regions and the mapped genes were related to TBI in several molecular studies. Moreover, depression symptoms were a strong predictor (with large weights) for both post-concussive symptom burden and pediatric quality of life.

CONCLUSION: This study emphasized that both molecular and behavioral manifestations of depression symptoms played a prominent role in predicting the recovery process following pediatric mTBI, suggesting the urgent need to further study TBI-caused depression symptoms for better recovery outcome.

Language: en

Keywords

Depression; DNA methylation; Pediatric mild traumatic brain injury; Pediatric quality of life; Post-concussion symptom burden