engleski

N-glycans in PTSD: preliminary results on glycomic biomarkers and aging

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is trauma- related disorder with characteristic symptoms (hyperarousal, avoidance, numbing, re- experiencing) as well as numerous comorbidities such as depression, anxiety disorders, alcoholism and suicidal behaviour. Alterations in biological systems (HPA, immune, noradrenergic, serotonergic systems), along with different psychological, social, environmental, genetic and epigenetic factors, contribute to development and severity of PTSD. At the moment, there are no specific, sensitive and validated biomarkers for PTSD. Protein glycosylation is the most common post- translational modification which is considered to be a cell’s adaptive answer to environment, possibly through its effect on inflammatory cascade (in particular immunoglobulin G). Previous studies showed different glycosylation patterns in some neuropsychiatric disorders. Only one small study analyzed 9 N-glycan structures and the GlycoAge Test in 13 subjects with PTSD, 9 trauma-exposed individuals and 10 low-stress control subjects. The present study evaluated plasma N-glycan chromatographic peaks and their differences in 204 war veterans with diagnosed PTSD compared to 134 control subjects. All participants were male Caucasians of Croatian origin. Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography discerned 39 plasma N-glycan peaks presented as total area normalized values. Preliminary results, corrected for age and multiple testing, showed highly significant changes in subjects with PTSD: 6 increased and 4 decreased N-glycan peaks in plasma. Increased N-glycan species are known to be higher during inflammatory processes and are characteristic for the older age. PTSD subjects had higher score on GlycoAge test than control samples, although this was seen only as a trend. Future studies with enlarged number of subjects should confirm accelerated process of aging in individuals with PTSD that could be mediated through inflammation, and could reveal the role of N-glycosylation in these processes.

PTSD ; N-glycans ; aging ; glycomics

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