Deep Phenotyping of Major Depressive Disorder in Adults

Deep Phenotyping of Major Depressive Disorder in Adults

Lay summary

Depression is a very common major health problem. With 350 million people affected in the world, depressive disorder is the second leading cause of global burden. The high direct and indirect costs for major depression are largely due to significant problems in treatment. There are several effective treatments for depressive disorder, but the key challenge is how best to use and deliver currently available effective treatments.

The UK Biobank is a National Health Service data archive, which contains a variety of medical information including genetic, brain imaging, biomarkers, cognitive function and reported medical histories for participants with and without major depressive disorder. These data offer the opportunity to investigate in a large cohort of individuals a great number of variables possibly related to depression and to treatment response.

Our aim is to perform a deep phenotyping of major depressive disorder in adults. We will also link clinical information available in medical records on the UK-CRIS dataset with the UK Biobank data to determine antidepressant response trajectories and associated clinical prognostic factors. It will help us to understand better prognostic factors and determinants of antidepressant response in people with major depressive disorders and will ultimately lead to improvement to our clinical practice.