Elsevier

Journal of Psychiatric Research

Volume 68, September 2015, Pages 176-185
Journal of Psychiatric Research

Different stress-related gene expression in depression and suicide

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2015.06.010Get rights and content

Highlights

  • In total 124 postmortem brain samples, derived from major depressive disorder who committed suicide and died of other cause.

  • Different gene expression patterns are present between patients that suffered from depression with or without suicide.

  • Changes are more pronounced in the anterior cingulate cortex than in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

  • Suicide and depression are two different molecular pathological disorders.

Abstract

Objective

Suicide occurs in some, but not all depressed patients. So far, it remains unknown whether the studied stress-related candidate genes change in depression, suicide or both. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is involved in, among other things, impulse control and inhibitory behavior and plays an important role in both suicide and depression.

Methods

We have employed qPCR to study 124 anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) brain samples, obtained from two brain banks, from: i) young depressed patients (average age 43 years) who committed suicide (MDD-S) and depressed patients who died from causes other than suicide (MDD-NS) and from ii) elderly depressed patients (average age 75 years) who did not commit suicide (DEP). Both cohorts were individually matched with non-psychiatric non-suicide control subjects. We determined the transcript levels of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis-regulating molecules (corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH), CRH receptors, CRH binding protein, mineralocorticoid receptor/glucocorticoid receptor), transcription factors that regulate CRH expression, CRH-stimulating cytokines, chaperone proteins, retinoid signaling, brain-derived neurotrophic factor and tropomyosin-related kinase B, cytochrome proteins, nitric oxide synthase (NOS) and monoamines.

Results

In the MDD-S group, expression levels of CRH and neuronal NOS-interacting DHHC domain-containing protein with dendritic mRNA (NIDD) were increased. Other changes were only present in the DEP group, i.e. decreased NIDD, and increased and 5-hydroxytryptamine receptor 1A (5-HT1A) expression levels. Changes were found to be more pronounced in the anterior cingulate cortex than in the dorsolateral PFC.

Conclusion

Depressed patients who committed suicide have different gene expression patterns than depressed patients who died of causes other than suicide.

Introduction

Both depression and suicide are characterized by alterations in the stress response (Bao et al., 2008, Pandey, 2013) and by complex patterns of alterations in various brain regions and neurotransmitter systems (Gross-Isseroff et al., 1998). Different lines of investigation indicate the involvement of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in depression, a brain region involved in, among other things, behavioral inhibition and impulse control. There is also a negative correlation between the severity of post-stroke depression and the distance between the brain injury site and the frontal pole (Narushima et al., 2003). Imaging studies have shown altered gray matter volume and thickness, and glucose metabolism and blood flow in the dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) of depressed patients (Drevets et al., 2008). Furthermore, morphological studies have shown reduced neuronal and glia cell densities in both the DLPFC and ACC in depression (Cotter et al., 2001, Rajkowska et al., 1999). These alterations in the PFC may contribute to a number of signs and symptoms of depression, such as cognitive decline, negative self-evaluation, and suicidal tendencies (Elliott et al., 2011). Concerning neurochemical alterations, monoaminergic receptors and their transporters (serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine) (Arranz et al., 1994, Mann, 2003, Shelton et al., 2009) and corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) in the hypothalamus: they have been frequently studied in relation to depression and suicide (Jokinen and Nordstrom, 2009, Wang et al., 2008), both of which are closely related to (regulation of) the stress response (Bao et al., 2008). In addition, CRH neurons are also located in most regions of the PFC (Swanson et al., 1983) that are part of the circuitry involved in modulating corticotropine, adrenocorticotroop hormone or cortisol-mediated responsivity to stress (Diorio et al., 1993). Also other neurotransmitters, such as the nitric oxide (NO) system, have drawn a lot of interest due to their changes in depression and suicide (Gao et al., 2013, Xing et al., 2002). Retinoid signaling, brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) and the gene that encodes its high-affinity receptor, tropomycin kinase B (TrkB), have received considerable attention in human studies of suicidal behavior. Some of these studies have revealed that people who commit suicide have decreased mRNA and/or protein levels of BDNF, TrkB, or both, in the PFC (Ernst et al., 2009, Maussion et al., 2014, Pandey et al., 2008). Their decreased expression correlated with hypermethylation of the BDNF promoters in exons 4 and 9 (Roth et al., 2009).

However, there is still no agreement on a particular molecular ‘signature’, which allows for distinguishing expression changes in depression per se from depression with suicide. One problem that affects the interpretation of post-mortem studies on this topic is the occurrence of suicide in many of the depression cohorts reported in literature. For instance, postmortem studies that claimed to have determined molecular alterations in relation to depression had in fact selected, in the diagnosis group, depressed patients who (nearly) all committed suicide, and compared them with control subjects without any psychiatric disorder and who did not commit suicide (Bernard et al., 2011, Cotter et al., 2001, Dwivedi et al., 2006b, Martins-de-Souza et al., 2012, Rajkowska et al., 1999, Shelton et al., 2009). Vice versa, the studies focused on suicide appeared to compare suicide cases to matched controls without any psychiatric disorder (Dwivedi et al., 2006a, Dwivedi et al., 2006b, Poulter et al., 2008, Thalmeier et al., 2008). Such methodological aspects have so far made it impossible to distinguish neurochemical alterations due to depression per se from those due to suicide.

We therefore investigated whether a series of stress-related candidate molecules differ in their expression in depressed patients in relation to suicide. We studied a Stanley Medical Research Institute (SMRI) patient cohort consisting of three groups: major depressive disorder patients who committed suicide (MDD-S), MDD patients who died of non-suicidal causes (MDD-NS), and control subjects without a psychiatric disorder, to answer the question whether suicide is responsible for the altered gene expression. In addition, elderly depressed patients who did not commit suicide (DEP) and their matched controls from the Netherlands Brain Bank (NBB) were studied to see what the alterations related to depression were, confirming the findings about young MDD-NS from SMRI in elderly depressed non-suicide patients.

Section snippets

Subjects from the Stanley Medical Research Institute (SMRI)

All patients whose brain material was obtained from SMRI had given permission for a brain autopsy and for the use of their brain material and clinical data for research purposes. MDD diagnoses were based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-IV and were made independently by two senior psychiatrists based on medical records and, when necessary, telephone interviews with family members. This systematized procedure was carried out as described before (Torrey et al.,

Altered mRNA expression levels in suicide and depression

In the ACC of SMRI patients, CRH transcripts were up-regulated in the MDD-S patients and compared to MDD-NS patients (1.98 fold changes, P = 0.003) and to the control group (1.56 fold changes, P = 0.008), while no differences were observed between MDD-NS patients and control subjects (P = 0.405) (Fig. 1A). In the DLPFC, we could not find any significant differences between MDD-S, MDD-NS, and control subjects (P = 0.487, Fig. 1B). In the NBB cohort, there was no significant change in CRH

Discussion

In an attempt to understand the biological processes associated with depression and suicide, one approach has been to study molecular changes in brain tissue obtained from patients that suffered from these disorders. So far, many post-mortem studies have searched for candidate genes, but there is considerable inconsistency in the reported results, which limits our understanding of the pathophysiology of these disorders. We show here that the composition of cohorts, i.e. the proportion of

Role of funding source

This investigation was supported by the projects of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (10CDP037), Nature Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (LY12H09007), Nature Science Foundation of China (31271130), Major Research Projects of Nature Science Foundation of China (91332102).

Contributors

J. Zhao, W. Kamphuis, and D. Swaab designed the protocol. J. Zhao, X.-R. Qi, S.-F. Gao, J. Lu and D.J. van Wamelen undertook data collection. J. Zhao, W. Kamphuis and A.-M. Bao undertook statistical analysis, and J. Zhao wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to and have approved the final manuscript.

Conflict of interest

None to declare.

Acknowledgments

Postmortem brain tissue was donated by The Stanley Medical Research Institute Brain Collection and Netherlands Brain Bank. We are indebted to them for providing us with the brain material and patient information. We thank Dr. Ronald WH Verwer for statistical assistance, Arja A Sluiter for her technical advice, and Wilma Verweij for secretarial help.

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