Case Control Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatry. May 19, 2025; 15(5): 102618
Published online May 19, 2025. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v15.i5.102618
Alterations of serum metabolic profile in major depressive disorder: A case-control study in the Chinese population
Bing Cao, Yuan-Li Liu, Na Wang, Yan Huang, Chen-Xuan Lu, Qian-Ying Li, Hong-Yu Zou
Bing Cao, Yuan-Li Liu, Na Wang, Yan Huang, Chen-Xuan Lu, Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality, Faculty of Psychology, Ministry of Education, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
Qian-Ying Li, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Jiulongpo District Psychiatric Health Center of Chongqing, Chongqing 401329, China
Hong-Yu Zou, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical and Pharmaceutical College, Chongqing 400000, China
Co-first authors: Bing Cao and Yuan-Li Liu.
Author contributions: Cao B and Liu YL contributed equally to this work as co-first authors; Cao B contributed to methodology, formal analysis, data extraction, follow-up, and manuscript writing, reviewing, and editing; Liu YL contributed to data extraction, data curation, follow-up, formal analysis, and manuscript writing, reviewing, and editing; Wang N was involved in supervision and providing the software; Hang Y contributed to data curation; Lu CX performed data curation; Zou HY contributed to conceptualization, funding acquisition, methodology, and manuscript writing, reviewing, and editing; all authors contributed to the interpretation of the study and approved the final version to be published.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 32300926; Youth Project of Science and Technology Research Program of Chongqing Education Commission of China, No. KJQN202402810; and Science and Health Joint Medical Research Project of Chongqing Nanan District, No. 2020-12.
Institutional review board statement: The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008. All procedures involving human subjects/patients were approved by the Chongqing Ninth People's Hospital in Chongqing (Approval no. IRB-2021-016).
Informed consent statement: Written informed consent was obtained from the patients before they participated in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Data sharing statement: The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hong-Yu Zou, MD, Assistant Professor, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical and Pharmaceutical College, No. 301 Nancheng Avenue, Nan’an District, Chongqing 400000, China. zouxiaobao19@163.com
Received: October 28, 2024
Revised: February 22, 2025
Accepted: March 21, 2025
Published online: May 19, 2025
Processing time: 188 Days and 8 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: Our study reported metabolites (some lipids, steroids, amino acids, carnitines, and alkaloids) responsible for discriminating major depressive disorder (MDD) patients and healthy controls. This metabolite signature may facilitate the development of a laboratory-based diagnostic test for MDD. The mechanisms underlying the association between psychological or clinical variables and differential metabolites deserve further exploration.