Abstract:

Objective To investigate the clinical significance of serum lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2（Lp-PL A2）in depression. Methods A total of 120 patients with depression（depression group） and 120 healthy subjects（healthy control group） were enrolled from the Mental Health Center Affiliated to Tongji University from January 2022 to December 2023. All the patients with depression were evaluated by patient health questionnaire（PHQ） -9 and Hamilton depression scale （HAMD） -17. They were classified into mild group，moderate group and severe group according to the severity of depression. The general data of all the subjects were collected，and serum Lp-PLA2，norepinephrine（NE），dopamine（DA） and 5-hydroxytryptamine（5-HT） levels were determined. Pearson correlation analysis was used to evaluate the correlation between indicators. Logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the effect of serum Lp-PLA2 on the severity of depression. Results The serum Lp-PLA2 level in depression group was higher than that in healthy control group（P<0.05）. PHQ-9 scores，HAMD-17 scores and serum Lp-PLA2 levels in mild，moderate and severe groups were increased successively（P<0.05），while serum NE，DA and 5-HT levels were decreased successively（P<0.05）. Serum Lp-PLA2 was positively correlated with PHQ-9 score and HAMD-17 score（r values were 0.424 and 0.325，P<0.05），and it was negatively correlated with serum NE，DA and 5-HT（r values were -0.387，-0.301 and -0.338，P<0.05）. The increased serum Lp-PLA2 level is a risk factor for the progression of depression [odds ratio（OR）=1.039，95% confidence interval（CI） 1.024-1.054，P<0.001]. Conclusions he serum Lp-PLA2 level is related to the disease progress of depression patients，and it may be used as one of the indicators for the evaluation of depression.

Key words: Lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2, Depression, Inflammatory response, Disease evaluation