Cited by 775Treatment of Major DepressionStress Responses and CortisolNeurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior

Sex-specific transcriptional signatures in human depression

Open access
Labonté, Benoit, Engmann, Olivia, Purushothaman, Immanuel, Menard, Caroline, Wang, Junshi, Tan, Chunfeng, Scarpa, Joseph R, Moy, Gregory +20 more·2017·Nature Medicine

Abstract

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disease burden worldwide. While the incidence, symptoms and treatment of MDD all point toward major sex differences, the molecular mechanisms underlying this sexual dimorphism remain largely unknown. Here, combining differential expression and gene coexpression network analyses, we provide a comprehensive characterization of male and female transcriptional profiles associated with MDD across six brain regions. We overlap our human profiles with those from a mouse model, chronic variable stress, and capitalize on converging pathways to define molecular and physiological mechanisms underlying the expression of stress susceptibility in males and females. Our results show a major rearrangement of transcriptional patterns in MDD, with limited overlap between males and females, an effect seen in both depressed humans and stressed mice. We identify key regulators of sex-specific gene networks underlying MDD and confirm their sex-specific impact as mediators of stress susceptibility. For example, downregulation of the female-specific hub gene Dusp6 in mouse prefrontal cortex mimicked stress susceptibility in females, but not males, by increasing ERK signaling and pyramidal neuron excitability. Such Dusp6 downregulation also recapitulated the transcriptional remodeling that occurs in prefrontal cortex of depressed females. Together our findings reveal marked sexual dimorphism at the transcriptional level in MDD and highlight the importance of studying sex-specific treatments for this disorder.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1038/nm.4386

Cites

136 of 136 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • In stress-related psychiatric disorders, there are sex-associated differences in incidence, symptoms and treatment response.

    “In stress-related psychiatric disorders, there are sex-associated differences in incidence, symptoms and treatment response (268).”

    From Epigenetic Modifications in Stress Response Genes Associated With Childhood Trauma (2019) · cites this paper as [268]

    The Introduction reports sex differences in the likelihood of developing major depressive disorder (MDD), symptom severity and presentation, and antidepressant treatment response. The claim extends those findings from MDD to stress-related psychiatric disorders generally, which this passage does not establish. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Depression is more common in females than males.

    “Similarly, depression is more common in females than males (268).”
  • A nearly identical module was recently identified as a sex-specific transcriptional signature of major depression and stress susceptibility.

    “Remarkably, a nearly identical module was recently identified as a sex-specific transcriptional signature of major depression and stress susceptibility (64).”
  • A recent paper reported distinct transcription signatures in multiple brain areas between male and female MDD patients.

    “A very recent paper reported distinct transcription signatures in multiple brain areas between male and female MDD patients, 26”

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. [81]Horvath S Applications in Genomics and Systems Biology Springer 2011
  2. [107]Nolte J The Human Brain: An Introduction to Its Functional Neuroanatomy 5th Mosby-Year Book Inc 2002
  3. [124]Smyth GK Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Solutions using R and Bioconductor 1 Carey V Gentleman R Dudoit S Irizarry R Huber W 397 420 Springer 2005

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Labonté, B., Engmann, O., Purushothaman, I., Menard, C., Wang, J., Tan, C., Scarpa, J. R., Moy, G., Loh, Y.-H. E., Cahill, M., Lorsch, Z. S., Hamilton, P. J., Calipari, E. S., Hodes, G. E., Issler, O., Kronman, H., Pfau, M., Obradovic, A. L. J., Dong, Y., Neve, R. L., Russo, S., Kasarskis, A., Tamminga, C., Mechawar, N., Turecki, G., Zhang, B., Shen, L., & Nestler, E. J.
Affiliations
  • Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (US)
  • University of Pittsburgh (US)
  • The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (US)
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
  • Douglas Mental Health University Institute (CA)
Corresponding author
Nestler, Eric J
Venue
Nature Medicine
Published
2017-08-21
Volume
23
Issue
9
Pages
1102-1111
ISSN
  • 1078-8956 (ISSN-L)
  • 1546-170X
OpenAlex
W2746917316
Cited by
748
References
135
Citations by year
2026: 65 · 2025: 84 · 2024: 114 · 2023: 90 · 2022: 73 · 2021: 101 · 2020: 76 · 2019: 81 · 2018: 57 · 2017: 7
FWCI
42.21
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature Medicine (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • National Institutes of Health (1s10od018522-01)
  • National Institute of Mental Health (R21MH099562, R01MH090264, F30MH110073, P50MH096890, T32MH096678, F30MH106293, R01MH051399, R01MH104559, T32MH087004)
  • National Institute on Drug Abuse (R21DA044538, R01DA034856, R01DA040620, R37DA023206)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pharmacology › Treatment of Major Depression
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
Keywords
major depressive disorder, sex differences, sexual dimorphism, gene expression signatures, gene co-expression network, chronic variable stress, DUSP6, ERK signaling, prefrontal cortex, stress vulnerability, brain regions
MeSH terms
Adult, Aged, Animals, Brain, Cerebral Cortex, Major Depressive Disorder, Depressive Disorder, Major, Disease Models, Animal, Female, Hippocampus, Humans, Immunohistochemistry, Male, Middle Aged, Nucleus Accumbens, Sex Characteristics, Sex Factors, Stress, Psychological, Blotting, Western, Down-Regulation, Case-Control Studies, Prefrontal Cortex, Sequence Analysis, RNA, Pyramidal Cells, Patch-Clamp Techniques, Mice, Transcriptome

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review