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Plasma lipidomics reveals potential lipid markers of major depressive disorder

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Abstract

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a grave debilitating mental disease with a high incidence and severely impairs quality of life. Therefore, its physiopathological basis study and diagnostic biomarker discovery are extremely valuable. In this study, a non-targeted lipidomics strategy using ultra performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-Q-TOF/MS) was performed to reveal differential lipids between MDD (n = 60) and healthy controls (HCs, n = 60). Validation of changed lipid species was performed in an independent batch including 75 MDD and 52 HC using the same lipidomic method. Pronouncedly changed lipid species in MDD were discovered, which mainly were lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC), lysophosphatidylethanolamine (LPE), phosphatidylcholine (PC), phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), phosphatidylinositol (PI), 1-O-alkyl-2-acyl-PE (PE O), 1-O-alkyl-2-acyl-PC (PC O), sphingomyelin (SM), diacylglycerol (DG), and triacylglycerol (TG). Among these lipid species, LPC, LPE, PC, PE, PI, TG, etc. remarkably increased in MDD and showed pronounced positive relationships with depression severity, while 1-O-alkyl-2-acyl-PE and SM with odd summed carbon number significantly decreased in MDD and demonstrated negative relationships with depression severity. A combinational lipid panel including LPE 20:4, PC 34:1, PI 40:4, SM 39:1, 2, and TG 44:2 was defined as potential diagnostic biomarker with a good sensitivity and specificity for distinguishing MDD from HCs. Our study brings insights into lipid metabolism disorder in MDD and provides a specific potential biomarker for MDD diagnose.

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Acknowledgments

The study has been supported by the key foundation (No. 21435006), the foundation (nos. 81401140 and 81370906), and the creative research group project (No. 21321064) from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Key Laboratory of Separation Science for Analytical Chemistry, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 457 Zhongshan Road, Dalian, Liaoning, 116023, China

      Xinyu Liu, Jia Li, Xinjie Zhao, Chunxiu Hu, Xiaoli Hou & Guowang Xu

    2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

      Xinyu Liu & Jia Li

    3. Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, 400016, China

      Peng Zheng, Chanjuan Zhou, Haiyang Wang & Peng Xie

    4. Institute of Neuroscience and the Collaborative Innovation Center for Brain Science, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, 400016, China

      Peng Zheng, Chanjuan Zhou, Haiyang Wang & Peng Xie

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    1. Xinyu Liu
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    2. Jia Li
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    Correspondence to Peng Xie or Guowang Xu.

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    Xinyu Liu, Jia Li and Peng Zheng contributed equally to this work.

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    Liu, X., Li, J., Zheng, P. et al. Plasma lipidomics reveals potential lipid markers of major depressive disorder. Anal Bioanal Chem 408, 6497–6507 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-016-9768-5

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-016-9768-5

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