Relationship between concentrations of IGF-1 and IGFBP-3 and preoperative depression risk, and effect of psychological intervention on outcomes of high-grade glioma patients with preoperative depression in a 2-year prospective study

The effect of depression and anxiety on survival in patients with glioma: a systematic review and meta-analysis

PURPOSE

Depression and anxiety's impact on glioma patient survival lacks consensus. Understanding these effects can highlight the importance of identifying depression and anxiety in glioma patients, and inform future treatments. This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to clarify the impact of depression and anxiety on glioma patient survival.

METHODS

We conducted a systematic literature search of major databases, including PubMed, Embase, Web of Science Core Collection, Cochrane Library, and PsycINFO, from inception to June 2023, to identify relevant studies. Eligible studies were those that examined the association between depression, anxiety, or both, and survival outcomes in glioma patients. Data were extracted and analyzed using fixed-effects meta-analysis models to calculate pooled hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs).

RESULTS

A total of 15 studies met the inclusion criteria, encompassing a diverse range of glioma patients across different clinical settings and stages. The meta-analysis revealed a statistically significant association between depression and reduced overall survival in glioma patients, with a pooled HR of 1.65 (95% CI: 1.41-1.83, 11 studies). The preliminary univariate meta-regression results indicate no impact of individual study characteristics on the effect size. Likewise, anxiety was associated with worse overall survival, with a pooled HR of 1.65 (95% CI: 1.18-2.31, 5 studies).

CONCLUSIONS

This meta-analysis underscores the vital need to identify and treat depression and anxiety in glioma patients. Future research should explore the underlying mechanisms, aiding the creation of interventions enhancing both mental health and clinical outcomes for this vulnerable group.

The Role of Adipokines in the Pathologies of the Central Nervous System

Adipokines are protein hormones secreted by adipose tissue in response to disruptions in physiological homeostasis within the body's systems. The regulatory functions of adipokines within the central nervous system (CNS) are multifaceted and intricate, and they have been identified in a number of pathologies. Therefore, specific adipokines have the potential to be used as biomarkers for screening purposes in neurological dysfunctions. The systematic review presented herein focuses on the analysis of the functions of various adipokines in the pathogenesis of CNS diseases. Thirteen proteins were selected for analysis through scientific databases. It was found that these proteins can be identified within the cerebrospinal fluid either by their ability to modify their molecular complex and cross the blood-brain barrier or by being endogenously produced within the CNS itself. As a result, this can correlate with their measurability during pathological processes, including Alzheimer's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, depression, or brain tumors.

Depression and Quality of Life in Patients with Gliomas: A Narrative Review

In patients with gliomas, depression is a common complication that may cause severe psychological barriers and deteriorate the patient’s quality of life (QoL). Currently, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) is the most commonly used tool to diagnose depression in patients with gliomas. Female sex, unmarried status, low education level, high tumor grade, and a history of mental illness may increase the risks of depression and depressive symptoms in patients with gliomas. The QoL of patients with gliomas can be directly reduced by depression. Therefore, the evaluation and intervention of mood disorders could improve the overall QoL of patients with gliomas. Antidepressant use has become a treatment strategy for patients with gliomas and comorbid depression. This narrative review summarizes the current issues related to depression in patients with gliomas, including the prevalence, risk factors, and diagnostic criteria of depression as well as changes in QoL caused by comorbid depression and antidepressant use. The purpose of this review is to guide clinicians to assess the psychological status of patients with gliomas and to provide clinicians and oncologists with a new treatment strategy to improve the prognosis of such patients.

Equivalent change enrichment analysis: assessing equivalent and inverse change in biological pathways between diverse experiments

Background

In silico functional genomics have become a driving force in the way we interpret and use gene expression data, enabling researchers to understand which biological pathways are likely to be affected by the treatments or conditions being studied. There are many approaches to functional genomics, but a number of popular methods determine if a set of modified genes has a higher than expected overlap with genes known to function as part of a pathway (functional enrichment testing). Recently, researchers have started to apply such analyses in a new way: to ask if the data they are collecting show similar disruptions to biological functions compared to reference data. Examples include studying whether similar pathways are perturbed in smokers vs. users of e-cigarettes, or whether a new mouse model of schizophrenia is justified, based on its similarity in cytokine expression to a previously published model. However, there is a dearth of robust statistical methods for testing hypotheses related to these questions and most researchers resort to ad hoc approaches. The goal of this work is to develop a statistical approach to identifying gene pathways that are equivalently (or inversely) changed across two experimental conditions.

Results

We developed Equivalent Change Enrichment Analysis (ECEA). This is a new type of gene enrichment analysis based on a statistic that we call the equivalent change index (ECI). An ECI of 1 represents a gene that was over or under-expressed (compared to control) to the same degree across two experiments. Using this statistic, we present an approach to identifying pathways that are changed in similar or opposing ways across experiments. We compare our approach to current methods on simulated data and show that ECEA is able to recover pathways exhibiting such changes even when they exhibit complex patterns of regulation, which other approaches are unable to do. On biological data, our approach recovered pathways that appear directly connected to the condition being studied.

Conclusions

ECEA provides a new way to perform gene enrichment analysis that allows researchers to compare their data to existing datasets and determine if a treatment will cause similar or opposing genomic perturbations.

Clinical study of preoperative psychological distress and its related factors in the primary caregivers of patients with glioma

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the preoperative psychological distress in the primary caregivers of glioma patients and its influencing factors and to determine the relationship between preoperative psychological states of glioma patients and their caregivers.

METHODS

Using a mixed methods design, the caregivers of patients with malignant glioma were interviewed and completed questionnaires about anxiety/depression and family function during preoperative period.

RESULTS

Caregivers of glioma patients had different types of psychological distress before surgery. A total of 46 caregivers (36.5 %) had preoperative psychological depression or anxiety symptom; 30 caregivers (23.8 %) had depression symptoms, 39 caregivers (31.0 %) had anxiety symptoms, and 23 (18.3 %) had both preoperative anxiety and depression symptoms. Female gender was an influential factor for both preoperative depression and anxiety symptoms in caregivers, surgical information was a risk factor for caregivers' preoperative depression symptoms and residence was a risk factor for caregivers' preoperative anxiety symptoms. The preoperative psychological states of patients was positively correlated with the preoperative anxiety and depression symptoms of caregivers.

CONCLUSION

The rural female caregivers are more likely to experience psychological distress before surgery, and the preoperative psychological states of patients was positively correlated with the psychological distress in caregivers.

Anxiety and depression in glioma patients: prevalence, risk factors, and their correlation with survival

AIMS

This study aimed to investigate the risk factors and prognostic value of anxiety and depression in glioma patients.

METHODS

A total of 190 glioma patients who underwent resection were consecutively enrolled. Anxiety was assessed using hospital anxiety and depression scale (HADS) and Zung self-rating anxiety scale (SAS); depression was assessed with the use of HADS and Zung self-rating depression scale (SDS). All patients were followed up to death or 36 months. Overall survival (OS) was calculated according to the survival data.

RESULTS

The prevalence of anxiety ranged from 36.3 to 37.4%, and the prevalence of depression ranged from 28.4 to 32.6% based on different assessment scales. Female, diabetes, and increased WHO grade were correlated with HADS anxiety and SAS anxiety, while female, single/divorced/widowed status, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, and CKD were associated with HADS depression and SDS depression. Further multivariate logistic analyses disclosed the following: single/divorced/widowed status and WHO grade were independent risk factors for HADS anxiety; female and hyperlipidemia were independent risk factors for SAS anxiety; whereas education duration (< 12 years), single/divorced/widowed status, and CKD were independent risk factors for HADS depression; female, single/divorced/widowed status, and hyperlipidemia were independent risk factors for SDS depression. Besides, HADS anxiety, SAS anxiety and SDS depression were correlated with shorter OS, while HADS depression was not.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings about the risk factors and prognostic value of anxiety and depression might aid for their early prevention and prognosis improvement in glioma patients.

Brain IGFBP-5 modifies the relation of depressive symptoms to decline in cognition in older persons

BACKGROUND

Brain proteins, including Insulin-like Growth Factor Binding Protein 5 (IGFBP-5), have been associated with cognitive dysfunction in aging. Mechanisms linking depression with cognition are poorly understood. We hypothesize that the association of depressive symptoms with cognition is mediated or modified by brain proteins.

METHODS

IGFBP-5, HSPB2, AK4, ITPK1 and PLXNB1 were measured in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in 1057 deceased participants, who underwent annual assessments of depressive symptoms and cognition for a mean of 8.9 years. The average number of depressive symptoms per year before a dementia diagnosis was calculated for each person.

RESULTS

A one standard deviation above the mean IGFBP-5 was associated with a 14% higher odds of having more depressive symptoms (p < 0.031). Higher IGFBP-5 was associated with faster decline in global cognition (p < 0.001) and five cognitive domains (p < 0.008), controlling for depressive symptoms. IGFBP-5 moderated the association of depressive symptoms with decline in global cognition (p = 0.045). IGFBP-5 mediated ten percent or less of the total effect of depressive symptoms on decline in global cognition and the cognitive domains (p > 0.070).

LIMITATIONS

Participants were volunteers and self-selection bias limits the generalizability of our findings. In addition, we used self-reported data on depressive symptoms. However, we also used data on depression medications as sensitivity analyses to confirm findings.

CONCLUSIONS

In old age, brain IGFBP-5 is associated with depressive symptoms and cognition. The association of depressive symptoms with cognitive decline is conditional on IGFBP-5.

Depression and survival of glioma patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis

INTRODUCTION

There is currently a lack of a well-formed consensus regarding the effects of depression on the survival of glioma patients. A more thorough understanding of such effects may better highlight the importance of recognizing depressive symptoms in this patient population and guide treatment plans in the future.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this meta-analysis was to study the effect of depression on glioma patients' survival.

METHODS

A meta-analysis was conducted according to the PRISMA guidelines. PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane databases were searched for studies that reported depression and survival among glioma patients through 11/06/2016. Both random-effects (RE) and fixed-effect (FE) models were used to compare survival outcomes in glioma patients with and without depression.

RESULTS

Out of 619 identified articles, six were selected for the meta-analysis. Using RE model, the various measures for survival outcomes displayed worsened outcomes for both high and low-grade glioma patients with depression compared to those without depression. For binary survival outcomes, the overall pooled risk ratio for survival was 0.70 (95% CI: 0.47, 1.04; 6 studies; I² = 54.9%, P-heterogeneity = 0.05) for high grade gliomas (HGG) and 0.28 (95% CI: 0.04, 1.78; I² = 0%, P-heterogeneity = 1.00; one study) for low grade gliomas (LGG) was. A sub-group analysis in the HGG group by depression timing (pre- versus post-operative) revealed no differences between depression and survival outcomes (P-interaction = 0.47). For continuous survival outcomes, no statistically significant difference was found among the high and low-grade glioma groups (P-interaction = 0.31). The standardized mean difference (SMD) in survival outcomes was -0.56 months (95%CI: -1.13, 0.02; 4 studies, I² = 89.4%, P-heterogeneity < 0.01) for HGG and -1.69 months (95%CI: -3.26, -0.13; one study; I² = 0%, P-heterogeneity = 1.00) for LGG. In patients with HGG, the pooled HR of death also showed a borderline significant increased risk of death among depressive patients (HR 1.42, 95% CI: 1.00, 2.01). Results using the FE model were not materially different.

CONCLUSIONS

Depression was associated with significantly worsened survival regardless of time of diagnosis, especially among patients with high-grade glioma.

Decreased plasma concentrations of BDNF and IGF-1 in abstinent patients with alcohol use disorders

The identification of growth factors as potential biomarkers in alcohol addiction may help to understand underlying mechanisms associated with the pathogenesis of alcohol use disorders (AUDs). Previous studies have linked growth factors to neural plasticity in neurocognitive impairment and mental disorders. In order to further clarify the impact of chronic alcohol consumption on circulating growth factors, a cross-sectional study was performed in abstinent AUD patients (alcohol group, N = 91) and healthy control subjects (control group, N = 55) to examine plasma concentrations of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) and IGF-1 binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3). The association of these plasma peptides with relevant AUD-related variables and psychiatric comorbidity was explored. The alcohol group was diagnosed with severe AUD and showed an average of 13 years of problematic use and 10 months of abstinence at the moment of participating in the study. Regarding common medical conditions associated with AUD, we observed an elevated incidence of alcohol-induced liver and pancreas diseases (18.7%) and psychiatric comorbidity (76.9%). Thus, AUD patients displayed a high prevalence of dual diagnosis (39.3%) [mainly depression (19.9%)] and comorbid substance use disorders (40.7%). Plasma BDNF and IGF-1 concentrations were significantly lower in the alcohol group than in the control group (p<0.001). Remarkably, there was a negative association between IGF-1 concentrations and age in the control group (r = -0.52, p<0.001) that was not found in the alcohol group. Concerning AUD-related variables, AUD patients with liver and pancreas diseases showed even lower concentrations of BDNF (p<0.05). In contrast, the changes in plasma concentrations of these peptides were not associated with abstinence, problematic use, AUD severity or lifetime psychiatric comorbidity. These results suggest that further research is necessary to elucidate the role of BDNF in alcohol-induced toxicity and the biological significance of the lack of correlation between age and plasma IGF-1 levels in abstinent AUD patients.

Proteomic and network analysis of human serum albuminome by integrated use of quick crosslinking and two-step precipitation

Affinity- and chemical-based methods are usually employed to prepare human serum albuminome; however, these methods remain technically challenging. Herein, we report the development of a two-step precipitation (TSP) method by combined use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) and ethanol. PEG precipitation was newly applied to remove immunoglobulin G for albuminome preparation, which is simple, cost effective, efficient and compatible with downstream ethanol precipitation. Nonetheless, chemical extraction using TSP may disrupt weak and transient protein interactions with human serum albumin (HSA) leading to an incomplete albuminome. Accordingly, rapid fixation based on formaldehyde crosslinking (FC) was introduced into the TSP procedure. The developed FC-TSP method increased the number of identified proteins, probably by favouring real-time capture of weakly bound proteins in the albuminome. A total of 171 proteins excluding HSA were identified from the fraction obtained with FC-TSP. Further interaction network and cluster analyses revealed 125 HSA-interacting proteins and 14 highly-connected clusters. Compared with five previous studies, 55 new potential albuminome proteins including five direct and 50 indirect binders were only identified by our strategy and 12 were detected as common low-abundance proteins. Thus, this new strategy has the potential to effectively survey the human albuminome, especially low-abundance proteins of clinical interest.