1997 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

An abnormal transcript of the heat shock protein 70 gene in patients with major depression

Research Project

Project/Area Number	08671113
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Psychiatric science
Research Institution	Tokyo Women's Medical College
Principal Investigator	SAKAMOTO Kaoru Tokyo Women's Medical College School of Medicine, Assistant Professor, 医学部, 講師 (30205760)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	TOMITAKA Shinichiro Tokyo Women's Medical College School of Medicine, Instructor, 医学部, 助手 (00237124)
Project Period (FY)	1996 – 1997
Keywords	affective disorder / depression / biologival marker / heat shock protein
Research Abstract	The heat shock or stress genes are induced by a wide variety of stimuli including heat, oxidative stress, prolonged seizure, and certain toxins. It is suggested that heat shock proteins may play important roles in the process of mental stress. To our knowledge, there are no report which have investigated the heat shock protein expression in affective disorder. Thus, we investigated the hsp70 mRNA transcripton in human lymphocyte using RTPCR (reverse transcript polymerase chain reaction). Fourtenn of 15 patients with depression showed abnormal transcript of hsp70. In contrast, normal volunteers show no abnormal trascript. These result suggest Heat shock protein 70 may play an imortant role in the mechanism of depression.