Transcriptome Sequencing in ECT For Schizophrenia: Small Study From China
Out on PubMed is this study from investigators in the Sichuan province of China:
Transcriptome Sequencing Reveals the Potential Mechanisms of Modified Electroconvulsive Therapy in Schizophrenia.
Psychiatry Investig. 2021 Apr 29. doi: 10.30773/pi.2020.0410. Online ahead of print.PMID: 33910328
The abstract is copied below:
Objective: Schizophrenia (SCZ) is one of the most common and severe mental disorders. Modified electroconvulsive therapy (MECT) is the most effective therapy for all kinds of SCZ, and the underlying molecular mechanism remains unclear. This study is aim to detect the molecule mechanism by constructing the transcriptome dataset from SCZ patients treated with MECT and health controls (HCs).
Methods: Transcriptome sequencing was performed on blood samples of 8 SCZ (BECT: before MECT; AECT: after MECT) and 8 HCs, weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was used to cluster the different expression genes, enrichment and protein-protein interaction (PPI) enrichment analysis were used to detect the related pathways.
Results: Three gene modules (black, blue and turquoise) were significantly associated with MECT, enrichment analysis found that the long-term potentiation pathway was associated with MECT. PPI enrichment p-value of black, blue, turquoise module are 0.00127, <1×10-16 and 1.09×10-13, respectively. At the same time, EP300 is a key node in the PPI for genes in black module, which got from the transcriptome sequencing data.
Conclusion: It is suggested that the long-term potentiation pathways were associated with biological mechanism of MECT.
Keywords: Electroconvulsive therapy; Network analysis; Schizophrenia; WGCNA.
The pdf is here:
And from the text:
And from the text:
In conclusion, our work still has some shortcomings and
limitations. The insufficient amount of the samples is a great
shortage; the influence of all the antipsychotics should be considered into the assessment of the severity of the symptoms,
the impact of mono-antipsychotic, MECT and antipsychotics
combined MECT treatment to gene expressions levels should
be considered in the future researches, the gene expression
changes in different time points in MECT therapy, the gene
expression profile of MECT-resistance patients and etc. What
is more, the transcriptome data of other SCZ related brain areas should also be detected to compare the DEGs to find more
possible pathways. Besides, the pathways that revealed by our
transcriptome data play a vital role in multiple neural functions, include cognitive function, neurodevelopment, synaptic plasticity and etc.
From all the above results, it is informed that many previous
studies and findings were based on the change of single gene
and/or protein of SCZ. Our study identified the long-term potentiation pathway and gene EP300 may play an important
role in MECT and provides a new and macro perspectives for
the future studies which devoted to understand the possible
mechanism of MECT in SCZ treatment.
This small genetic study (8 patients with schizophrenia, 8 controls) describes gene expression changes in the patients after successful ECT. The specific findings implicating long term potentiation pathways and the EP300 gene are of unclear significance. The manuscript has language limitations, as well.
I have featured this article today merely to bring attention to the fact that this line of research is being pursued; elucidating the mechanism of action of ECT remains a topic of great interest worldwide. And, more generally, the full promise of genetic research in Psychiatry remains elusive...
If any readers with sophisticated knowledge of the genetics methods used in this study would like to comment, that would be much appreciated.
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