Research teams at Kyushu University, Osaka University, and others have discovered the presence of metabolites associated with severity in the blood of depressed patients.If the severity of depression can be evaluated from blood sampling, it is expected that early treatment will be possible.The research results were published in the electronic version of the American scientific journal "PLOS ONE".
According to Kyushu University, a total of 90 depressed patients who visited Kyushu University Hospital, Osaka University Hospital, and National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry were interviewed by experts to evaluate the severity of depression and collected from patients. We measured and analyzed 100 kinds of metabolites in the blood.
As a result, 20 metabolites related to the severity of depression were found.Of these, five metabolites such as 3-hydroxybutyric acid and betaine were found to be closely associated with the severity of depression in patients of three institutions.
Furthermore, it was found that there are metabolites related to each symptom such as depressed mood, guilt, and desire to die (suicidal ideation).For example, metabolites of the kynurenine pathway, which are suggested to be associated with intracerebral immune cell microglia (* 1), were deeply associated with those who wanted to die.
Early detection is essential for the treatment of depression, but until now, evaluation methods based on the subjective complaints of the individual have been common, and more objective evaluation methods have been sought.The research team believes that the results will not only pave the way for the development of new evaluation methods, but will also help elucidate the mechanism of depression and develop therapeutic agents.
* 1 Microglia Immune cells in the brain are known to cause neuronal damage when excessively activated by various factors such as infection and stress.
