On July 7, a research group led by Professor Tetsuro Omori and Associate Professor Shu Numata in the Department of Psychiatry, Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tokushima University identified blood metabolites associated with depression, and these multiple substances are depressed. It announced that it has revealed the possibility of becoming a blood diagnostic marker for the disease.
The lifetime incidence of depression in Japan is 3-7%.Diagnosis is based on the clinical symptoms presented by the patient, but the challenge is to establish a minimally invasive diagnostic marker for depression that facilitates early diagnosis and the introduction of appropriate treatment.
This time, the research group conducted plasma metabolome analysis using a mass spectrometer, compared two groups of 33 depressed patients and 33 non-depressed patients, and identified 33 blood metabolites that differed between the groups. bottom.Subsequently, some of these metabolites were shown to be able to distinguish between the two groups with high accuracy, revealing their potential potential blood diagnostic markers for depression.
It is expected that this result will be useful not only for the development of diagnostic markers for depression but also for the elucidation of the pathological condition.
