Abstract

Social stress has been shown to have a negative impact on mental health. Stress can also exert an epigenetic impact, potentially leading to a variety of complicated mental diseases such as depression in future life. Key molecules that play a decisive role in depression include the serotonin-related genes. A growing body of literature, both in human studies and animal models, is documenting the relationship between social stress and the genetic variation of serotonin associated genes. According to these studies, stress causes a variety of persistent alterations in gene expression through epigenetic mechanisms, including altered arginine vasopressin expression.

This is interesting because again therapy response of the patient to antidepressants is associated with epigenetic changes in some genes in the serotonergic system. Rather than genetic modulations in mood through differential expression of serotonergic pathway components, there is also evidence that specific serotonergic receptors modulate specific personality traits. Serotonin receptors (mainly 5-HT2A) are the primary site of action of psychedelics and there is also mounting evidence that variations in response to psychedelics are related to genetic variances related to traits. One of the questions that remains open is if the effects of psychedelic therapy such as ketamine can be attributed to epigenetic modification of serotonergic genes.

This study will assess the impact of ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) on the epigenetics of specific serotonin genes among patients with MDD by using buccal swabs. This research is predicted to lead us to a better understanding of the genesis, development, and therapy of depression.

Arghavan Nepton (1), Hesam Farahani (2), Sonya C. Faber (3), Monnica T. Williams (4)
1(Neuroscience, University of Ottawa, ON, Canada, 2)Linguistics and Language Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada, 3)Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada 4)Cellular and Molecular Medicine, University of Ottawa, ON, Canada