Abstract

DNA Microarray Analysis of Dorsal Lateral Prefrontal Cortex from Patients with Major Depressive Disorder Reveals Coordinated Alteration of Gene Expression in a Growth Factor Pathway.

Evans SJ; Choudary PV; Vawter MP; Tomita H; Li J; Meador-Woodruff JH; Lopez JF; Myers RM; Jones EG; Bunney WE; Watson SJ; Akil H.
Society for Neuroscience 32nd annual meeting. 2002.

Abstract

In order to further understand the neurobiology of depression we have used DNA microarrays to study expression profiles of human post-mortem brains from patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) or bipolar disorder (BPD). Initially our work has focused on three brain regions: the anterior cingulate cortex (AnCg), the dorsalateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and the cerebellum (CB). The study was designed such that each biological sample was analyzed separately at two different institutions to reduce systematic experimental errors. In addition two independent cohorts of patients were analyzed separately to provide replication and minimize sampling bias and variability. Data were analyzed so that genes were considered differentially expressed if they passed filtering criteria (t-test, p<0.05) across both technical replicates and biological replicates. This report will focus on a specific growth factor pathway differentially expressed in DLPFC tissue of MDD patients relative to controls. An analysis of AnCg tissue of BPD patients is described by Tomita et al. and an analysis of brain structure comparisons across disease states is described by Choudary et al.