Serum Exosome-Derived miR-139-5p as a Potential Biomarker for Major Depressive Disorder

Abstract

Jia-Quan Liang,1,* Hai-Rong Liao,1,* Cai-Xia Xu,1 Xiao-Ling Li,1 Ze-Xu Wei,2 Guo-Jun Xie,1 Yong Cheng1,2 1Department of Psychiatry, The Third People’s Hospital of Foshan, Foshan, Guangdong, People’s Republic of China; 2Center on Translational Neuroscience, Minzu University of China, Beijing, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Guo-Jun Xie; Yong Cheng Email [email protected]; [email protected]: MicroRNAs (miRs) have been suggested to be biomarkers to inform the diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD). We have previously shown that exosome-derived miR-139-5p had potential in differentiating between patients with MDD and healthy control (HC) subjects.Materials and Methods: To validate the potential of exosome-derived miR-139-5p as a biomarker for MDD, here we recruited 30 patients with MDD and 30 HC subjects, and used TaqMan probes to detect serum exosomal miR-139-5p levels.Results: The data showed that patients with MDD had significantly increased exosomal miR-139-5p levels when compared with controls. Correlation analysis suggested that sex, age, and body mass index did not significantly affect blood exosomal miR-139-5p levels in the tested subjects. The ROC curve showed that serum-derived miR-139-5p had reasonable performance in discriminating patients with MDD and HC subjects, with a sensitivity of 0.867 and specificity of 0.767, and the AUC was 0.807.Discussion: Taken together, these results demonstrated that patients with MDD were accompanied by significantly increased blood exosomal miR-139-5p levels, and exosomal miR-139-5p is a promising biomarker for the diagnosis of MDD.Keywords: major depressive disorder, exosome, miR-139-5p, biomarker

Keywords

• major depressive disorder
• exosome
• mir-139-5p
• biomarker