Assessment of biomarker stability and assay performance parameters for medical diagnosis: a case study of diagnosis of major depressive disorder.

Assessing the stability profiles and assay performance of 24 biomarker assays in 32 biomarker/body fluid combinations identified as relevant for prediction of major depressive disorder. Combinations were tested for stability and assay performance with ELISA at different storage and freeze-thaw conditions in pooled samples of 40 patients. Stability and assay performance issues were found in almost all cases except three biomarkers in urine and three in serum.

The Relationship between Insomnia and the Pathophysiology of Major Depressive Disorder: An Evaluation of a Broad Selection of Serum and Urine Biomarkers.

Insomnia exhibits a clinically relevant relationship with major depressive disorder (MDD). Increasing evidence suggests that insomnia is associated with neurobiological alterations that resemble the pathophysiology of MDD. However, research in a clinical population is limited.

Gender Differences in Developing Biomarker-Based Major Depressive Disorder Diagnostics.

The identification of biomarkers associated with major depressive disorder (MDD) holds great promise to develop an objective laboratory test. However, current biomarkers lack discriminative power due to the complex biological background, and not much is known about the influence of potential modifiers such as gender. We first performed a cross-sectional study on the discriminative power of biomarkers for MDD by investigating gender differences in biomarker levels.

Biomarker approaches in major depressive disorder evaluated in the context of current hypotheses.

Major depressive disorder is a heterogeneous disorder, mostly diagnosed on the basis of symptomatic criteria alone. It would be of great help when specific biomarkers for various subtypes and symptom clusters of depression become available to assist in diagnosis and subtyping of depression, and to enable monitoring and prognosis of treatment response. However, currently known biomarkers do not reach sufficient sensitivity and specificity, and often the relation to underlying pathophysiology is unclear.