Association between psychiatric symptoms with multiple peripheral blood sample test: a 10-year retrospective study

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience and Psychiatry
• Biomarker Discovery
• Computational Linguistics in Medicine

Background:

• Current psychiatric diagnoses (DSM-5) focus on symptoms, potentially overlooking biological dimensions.
• Brain-somatic crosstalk is implicated in psychiatric disorders, necessitating exploration beyond traditional symptomology.
• Investigating peripheral blood markers may offer objective insights into major depressive disorder (MDD), bipolar disorder (BD), and schizophrenia (SCZ).

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the associations between peripheral blood test indices and symptom severity in MDD, BD, and SCZ.
• To explore the potential utility of peripheral blood test results as objective indicators in psychiatric diagnoses.
• To investigate the relationship between inflammatory markers and symptom domains using the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of patient data (MDD, BD, SCZ) from 2009-2021.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) used to translate clinical complaints into RDoC symptom severity scores.
• Generalized linear models applied to assess correlations between blood test values and RDoC scores, adjusted for covariates.

Main Results:

• Significant associations found between inflammatory markers (e.g., basophil, lymphocyte, monocyte, neutrophil percentages) and the Negative Valence System (NVS) and Positive Valence System (PVS) domains.
• Blood glucose, urea, urate, cystatin C, and albumin showed notable links to various psychiatric symptoms.
• Mood symptoms (mania, depression, anxiety) exhibited opposing relationships with similar blood indices, suggesting a potential continuum.

Conclusions:

• Inflammatory responses are strongly correlated with NVS, PVS, and a spectrum of psychiatric symptoms, including mood, psychomotor, and cognitive functions.
• While inflammatory markers were elevated in SCZ, mean values did not significantly differ across SCZ, BD, and MDD.
• Peripheral blood markers show promise as potential objective indicators, complementing symptom-based psychiatric diagnostics.