Biomarkers for depression

Abstract

Although a large body of research accumulated over the past decades points to distinct biological mechanisms being involved in the pathophysiology of major depressive disorder (MDD), its precise pathobiology is not yet fully understood. In the last 20 years, substantial new research has been generated in an attempt to identify and characterize candidate biomarkers forMDD. This chapter provides the current state of biomarker research inMDDand summarizes themost recent results from neuroimaging, genetic, epigenetic, and neurochemical studies in MDD. Promising new findings report high diagnostic accuracy for metabolomic and epigenetic approaches as well as combinatorial functional neuroimaging approaches.