Antenatal depression affects similar to 9-19% of pregnant women and can
exert persistent adverse effects on both mother and child. There is a
need for a deeper understanding of antenatal depression mechanisms and
the development of tools for reliable diagnosis and early identification
of women at high risk. As the use of untargeted blood metabolomics in
the investigation of psychiatric and neurological diseases has increased
substantially, the main objective of this study was to investigate
whether untargeted gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) plasma
metabolomics in 45 women in late pregnancy, residing in Uppsala, Sweden,
could indicate metabolic differences between women with and without
depressive symptoms. Furthermore, seasonal differences in the metabolic
profiles were explored. When comparing the profiles of cases with
controls, independently of season, no differences were observed.
However, seasonal differences were observed in the metabolic profiles of
control samples, suggesting a favorable cardiometabolic profile in the
summer vs. winter, as indicated by lower glucose and sugar acid
concentrations and lactate to pyruvate ratio, and higher abundance of
arginine and phosphate. Similar differences were identified between
cases and controls among summer pregnancies, indicating an association
between a stressed metabolism and depressive symptoms. No
depression-specific differences were apparent among depressed and
non-depressed women, in the winter pregnancies; this could be attributed
to an already stressed metabolism due to the winter living conditions.
Our results provide new insights into the pathophysiology of antenatal
depression, and warrant further investigation of the use of metabolomics
in antenatal depression in larger cohorts
