Acylcarnitines are associated with lower depressive symptomatology in a mainland puerto rican cohort

Introduction

Recent studies have implicated acetyl-l-carnitine as well as other acylcarnitines in depression. To our knowledge, no untargeted metabolomics studies have been conducted among US mainland Puerto Ricans.

Objectives

We conducted untargeted metabolomic profiling on plasma from 736 participants of the Boston Puerto Rican Health Study.

Methods

Using Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis, we identified metabolite modules associated with depressive symptomatology, assessed via the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale. We identified metabolites contributing to these modules and assessed the relationship between these metabolites and depressive symptomatology.

Results

621 annotated metabolites clustered into eight metabolite modules, of which one, the acylcarnitine module, was significantly inversely associated with depressive symptomatology (β = − 27.7 (95% CI (− 54.5—0.8); p = 0.043). Several metabolite hub features in the acylcarnitine module were significantly associated with depressive symptomatology, after correction for multiple comparisons.

Conclusions

In this untargeted plasma metabolomics study among mainland Puerto Rican older adults, acylcarnitines, as a metabolite module were inversely associated with depressive symptomatology.