Journal of International Psychiatry

Objective The present study aimed to explore serum objective indicators related to depression patients with liver Qi stagnation syndrome by using chemometrics method. Methods The present study enrolled 51 depression patients with liver Qi stagnation syndrome and 22 age-, gender- and education- matched healthy controls. Serum parameters (5-HT, VIP, CREB, NA, NO) were measured by ELISA. Furthermore, t-test and chemometrics method were performed on the data analysis. Results The levels of 5-HT, CREB and VIP of patients were significantly lower compared with healthy controls. The chemometrics method showed that the patients could be discriminated from healthy controls. Chemometrics method can rank these indicators according to their importance.: 5-HT>CREB>1>VIP>NA>NO. Conclusion Our study found that 5-HT and CREB could be used as potential biomarkers of depression patients with liver and qi stagnation syndrome, laid a foundation of methodology of TCM syndrome differentiation in the syndrome, and provided a better analysis method for further study on objective indicators related to TCM syndrome.

Depression patients; Liver Qi stagnation syndrome; Chemometrics method; Objective indicators; Variable importance in projection