Zou ZL, Zhang Y, Huang YL, Wang JY, Zhou B, Chen HF. Pilot study of genome-wide DNA methylation and gene expression for treatment response to escitalopram in panic disorder. World J Psychiatry 2023; 13(8): 524-532 [PMID: 37701547 DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v13.i8.524]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Hua-Fu Chen, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No.32 West Second Section First Ring Road, Chengdu 611731, Sichuan Province, China. chenhf@uestc.edu.cn
Research Domain of This Article
Genetics & Heredity
Article-Type of This Article
Basic Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Zhi-Li Zou, Yu-Lan Huang, Jin-Yu Wang, Bo Zhou, Hua-Fu Chen, Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, Sichuan Province, China
Yuan Zhang, Personalized Drug Therapy Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Sichuan Academy of Medical Sciences & Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, Chengdu 610072, Sichuan Province, China
Author contributions: Zou ZL was responsible for methodology, writing-original draft, funding acquisition, participants recruitment, blood sample collection, and data curation; Zhang Y was responsible for data curation, formal analysis; Huang YL and Wang JY was responsible for participants recruitment; Zhou B and Chen HF was responsible for conceptualization and participants recruitment.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital ethics committee, reference number: (2021) Ethics Review (313).
Informed consent statement: All individuals provided written informed consent prior to the initiation of study procedures.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors report no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: The data used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on 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: Hua-Fu Chen, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No.32 West Second Section First Ring Road, Chengdu 611731, Sichuan Province, China. chenhf@uestc.edu.cn
Received: May 17, 2023 Peer-review started: May 17, 2023 First decision: July 4, 2023 Revised: July 5, 2023 Accepted: July 27, 2023 Article in press: July 27, 2023 Published online: August 19, 2023 Processing time: 92 Days and 4.6 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are currently considered the first-line treatment for panic disorder (PD). However, not all patients benefit from the antidepressant therapy.
Research motivation
No genome-wide methylation studies or mRNA sequencing have been conducted to identify early response biomarkers in patients with PD.
Research objectives
To compare genome-wide methylation and gene expression patterns between responsive and non-responsive patients with PD after 4 wk of escitalopram treatment.
Research methods
Thirty patients with PD were enrolled in this study (responders = 13; non-responders = 17). All patients were assessed using the PD Severity Scale-Chinese version before and after treatment. The Illumina Infinium MethylationEPIC (850k) BeadChip for genome-wide methylation screening and mRNA sequencing was used in all patients with PD.
Research results
A total of 701 differentially methylated positions (DMPs) were found between responders and non-responders (|Δβ| ≥ 0.06, q < 0.05), and the hyper- and hypomethylated CpG sites were 511 (72.9%) and 190 (27.1%), respectively. Relative to non-responders, there were 59 differential transcripts, of which 20 were downregulated and 39 were upregulated (q < 0.05).
Research conclusions
This preliminary study showed that DMPs might be associated with the treatment response to escitalopram in PD, however, these DMPs need to be verified in large samples.
Research perspectives
DNA methylation contributing to antidepressant response will be a unique and promising opportunity to implement personalized medicine in PD treatment.
