Citation

Zhao J, Verwer RW, van Wamelen DJ, Qi XR, Gao SF, Lucassen PJ, Swaab DF. J. Psychiatr. Res. 2016; 82: 8-15.

Affiliation

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, an Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Electronic address: d.f.swaab@nin.knaw.nl.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.jpsychires.2016.06.017

PMID

27450072

Abstract

There are indications for changes in glutamate metabolism in relation to depression or suicide. The glutamate-glutamine cycle and neuronal/glial glutamate transporters mediate the uptake of the glutamate and glutamine. The expression of various components of the glutamate-glutamine cycle and the neuronal/glial glutamate transporters was determined by qPCR in postmortem prefrontal cortex. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) were selected from young MDD patients who had committed suicide (MDD-S; n = 17), from MDD patients who died of non-suicide related causes (MDD-NS; n = 7) and from matched control subjects (n = 12). We also compared elderly depressed patients who had not committed suicide (n = 14) with matched control subjects (n = 22). We found that neuronal located components (EAAT3, EAAT4, ASCT1, SNAT1, SNAT2) of the glutamate-glutamine cycle were increased in the ACC while the astroglia located components (EAAT1, EAAT2, GLUL) were decreased in the DLPFC of MDD-S patients. In contrast, most of the components in the cycle were increased in the DLPFC of MDD-NS patients. In conclusion, the glutamate-glutamine cycle - and thus glutamine transmission - is differentially affected in depressed suicide patients and depressed non-suicide patients in an area specific way.

Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Language: en