Principal component analysis on the effect of early morning awakening in major depressive disorder

Abstract

Sleep disturbance is one of the most prevalent symptoms associated with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). A recent article (Wu et al., 2022, Journal of Multiscale Neuroscience 1, 133-139) explored the significant relationship between early morning awakening (EMA), a type of sleep disturbance, and recovery in MDD patients. In the paper, the authors examined the relationship between EMA and the treatment of MDD with twelve neuropsychological parameters. The authors employed two univariate statistical techniques, students’ t-test and ANOVA, to analyze their data. While their analysis derived a meaningful conclusion that EMA may result in a statistically and clinically significant delay in recovery, we found that a multivariate statistical technique, principal component analysis (PCA), extracted additional quantitative information from their study. In this paper, we present quantitative features in the interaction between EMA and the treatment of MDD obtained from PCA.