- Payne, Jennifer L;
- Osborne, Lauren M;
- Cox, Olivia;
- Kelly, John;
- Meilman, Samantha;
- Jones, Ilenna;
- Grenier, Winston;
- Clark, Karen;
- Ross, Evelyn;
- McGinn, Rachel;
- Wadhwa, Pathik D;
- Entringer, Sonja;
- Dunlop, Anne L;
- Knight, Anna K;
- Smith, Alicia K;
- Buss, Claudia;
- Kaminsky, Zachary A
We sought to replicate and expand upon previous work demonstrating antenatal TTC9B and HP1BP3 gene DNA methylation is prospectively predictive of postpartum depression (PPD) with ~80% accuracy. In a preterm birth study from Emory, Illumina MethylEPIC microarray derived 1st but not 3rd trimester biomarker models predicted 3rd trimester Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) scores ≥ 13 with an AUC=0.8 (95% CI: 0.63-0.8). Bisulfite pyrosequencing derived biomarker methylation was generated using bisulfite pyrosequencing across all trimesters in a pregnancy cohort at UC Irvine and in 3rd trimester from an independent Johns Hopkins pregnancy cohort. A support vector machine model incorporating 3rd trimester EPDS scores, TTC9B, and HP1BP3 methylation status predicted 4 week to 6 week postpartum EPDS ≥ 13 from 3rd trimester blood in the UC Irvine cohort (AUC=0.78, 95% CI: 0.64-0.78) and from the Johns Hopkins cohort (AUC=0.84, 95% CI: 0.72-0.97), both independent of previous psychiatric diagnosis. Technical replicate predictions in a subset of the Johns Hopkins cohort exhibited strong cross experiment correlation. This study confirms the PPD prediction model has the potential to be developed into a clinical tool enabling the identification of pregnant women at future risk of PPD who may benefit from clinical intervention.