Because
major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD)
manifest with similar symptoms, misdiagnosis is a persistent issue,
necessitating their differentiation through objective methods. This
study was aimed to differentiate between these disorders using a targeted
proteomic approach. Multiple reaction monitoring-mass spectrometry
(MRM-MS) analysis was performed to quantify protein targets regarding
the two disorders in plasma samples of 270 individuals (90 MDD, 90
BD, and 90 healthy controls (HCs)). In the training set (72 MDD and
72 BD), a generalizable model comprising nine proteins was developed.
The model was evaluated in the test set (18 MDD and 18 BD). The model
demonstrated a good performance (area under the curve (AUC) >0.8)
in discriminating MDD from BD in the training (AUC = 0.84) and test
sets (AUC = 0.81) and in distinguishing MDD from BD without current
hypomanic/manic/mixed symptoms (90 MDD and 75 BD) (AUC = 0.83). Subsequently,
the model demonstrated excellent performance for drug-free MDD versus
BD (11 MDD and 10 BD) (AUC = 0.96) and good performance for MDD versus
HC (AUC = 0.87) and BD versus HC (AUC = 0.86). Furthermore, the nine
proteins were associated with neuro, oxidative/nitrosative stress,
and immunity/inflammation-related biological functions. This proof-of-concept
study introduces a potential model for distinguishing between the
two disorders.