Gene Expression Meta-Analysis of Major Depressive Disorder and Its Relationship with Alzheimer’s Disease
Abstract Introduction: Major depressive disorder (MDD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are often co-existing in the elderly and have been suggested to share common pathological and physiological links. Understanding the connections between these two diseases could benefit for revealing new possible strategies of early diagnosis and therapeutic intervention. Methods: we conducted a meta-analysis to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in MDD microarray datasets including 180 MDD and 281 control prefrontal cortex of brain samples. Using identified DEGs, we performed gene ontology (GO), pathway and protein-protein interaction (PPI) analysis. Results: We identified 1400 DEGs, of which 846 were upregulated and 554 was downregulated in MDD. 198 DEGs were found over-lapping between AD and MDD compared with the previous study on AD. The over-lapping DEGs were particularly enriched in the protein binding of gene ontology and Signal Transduction, Immune System, Metabolism of proteins as for pathways. CDC42 was the most important gene in PPI network which had the most connections with other genes.Conclusion: Our study shows that MDD and AD share significant common DEGs and pathways and add some new potential perspectives to the comprehensive neurobiologic model between MDD and the development of AD.