Discovery of biomarkers for depressed patients and evaluation of Xiaoyaosan efficacy based on liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry

Abstract

Depression, a serious mental illness, affects a considerable proportion of people to suffer greatly and function poorly in everyday life. Xiaoyaosan, as a well-known Chinese formula, has been widely used as an alternative treatment of depression. However, there are few reports about laboratory tests for diagnosis of depression and treatment response of Xiaoyaosan. In this study, the plasma profiling of depressed patients before and after treatment with Xiaoyaosan as well as healthy controls were analyzed through liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Meanwhile, the multivariate statistical methods and the random forest were used to screen the potential biomarkers. And the clinical value for depression diagnosis and the evaluation of Xiaoyaosan efficacy were revealed by receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis. Subsequently, the analysis of metabolic networks was performed to investigate the relationship among potential biomarkers. The result suggests, the plasma profiling in depressed patients was changed significantly compared with healthy controls and returned to normal level after the treatment with Xiaoyaosan. Nine potential biomarkers were screened, and three of them were considered as the clinical markers for early diagnosis of depression and efficacy evaluation of Xiaoyaosan. These findings facilitate the clinical diagnosis of depression, efficacy evaluation, and therapeutic mechanism elucidation of Xiaoyaosan.