Proteomic Analysis of Cerebrospinal Fluid in Suicidal Patients - A Pilot Study

Abstract

Despite the fact that “omic” technologies (including genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic technologies) are becoming widely used in various medical fields, their use in psychiatry is still very limited. Assessing suicidal behavior in psychiatric practice consists mostly of semi-structured questionnaires or various self-assessing scales. Information obtained this way is rather subjective. Therefore, our proteomic approach may provide more valid and objective way how to assess suicidality in daily clinical practice by finding possible candidates for biomarkers of suicidal behavior. In the present short communication, we present and discuss the results of our pilot proteomic study of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in two adult suicidal patients post-mortem (males, average age: 55, cause of death: hanging, no concomitant medication, no medical history), two adult controls post-mortem (males, average age: 55, cause of death: heart attack, no concomitant medication, no medical history) and two adult controls in-vivo (females, average age: 55, diagnosis: hydrocephalus, no concomitant medication – samples were drawn before the medication was taken). Samples of CSF in-vivo were included in this study to confirm the presence of identified proteins in living subjects and also to define their levels in CSF. Per subject, 5 ml of CSF was collected and post-mortem interval (PMI) did not exceed 32 hours. The protocol and informed consents for this study were approved by local ethical committee.