Transcriptome profiling as a biological marker for bipolar disorder sub-phenotypes

Purpose

Bipolar affective disorder (BP) causes major functional impairment and reduced quality of life not only for patients, but also for many close relatives. We aimed to investigate mRNA levels in BP patients to find differentially expressed genes linked to specific clinical course variants; assuming that several gene expression alterations might indicate vulnerability pathways for specific course and severity of the disease.

Materials

We searched for up- and down-regulated genes comparing patients with diagnosis of BP type I (BPI) vs type II (BPII), history of suicide attempts, psychotic symptoms, predominance of manic/hypomanic episodes, and history of numerous episodes and comorbidity of substance use disorders or anxiety disorders. RNA was extracted from peripheral blood mononuclear cells and analyzed with use of microarray slides.

Results

Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were found in all disease characteristics compared. The lowest number of DEGs were revealed when comparing BPI and BPII patients (18 genes), and the highest number when comparing patients with and without psychotic symptoms (3223 genes). Down-regulated genes identified here with the use of the DAVID database were among others linked to cell migration, defense response, and inflammatory response.

Conclusions

The most specific transcriptome profile was revealed in BP with psychotic symptoms. Differentially expressed genes in this variant include, among others, genes involved in inflammatory and immune processes. It might suggest the overlap of biological background between BP with a history of psychotic features and schizophrenia.