Table 1.
Spearman rank correlation of FKBP5 with candidate genes including FKBP4 in human post-mortem brain specimens and in blood samples from PTSD patients vs. controls before and after psychosocial stress.
| FKBP5 |
FKBP4 |
||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Post-mortem human brain |
Blood samples from total (fused) PTSD patients + controls cohort |
Dataset 1 (GSE35974) |
|||||||
| Dataset 1 (GSE35974) |
Dataset 2 (GSE46706) |
||||||||
| cerebellum | hippoc. | ten brain regions (incl. hippoc.) | baseline | Immediately after stress exposure | baseline | Immediately after stress exposure | cerebellum | ||
| NEFH | 0.403 ** | 0.0459 | – | – | – | – | – | – | −0.179 |
| HOMER1 | 0.120 | −0.0679 | – | – | – | – | – | – | 0.027 |
| SYP | 0.336 | −0.344 *** | – | – | – | – | – | – | 0.272 |
| MAP2 | −0.043 | −0.104 | – | – | – | – | – | – | 0.196 |
| GFAP | 0.570 *** | 0.301 *** | – | – | – | – | – | – | −0.164 |
| NR3C1 | −0.530 *** | −0.368 *** | – | – | −0,505*** | −0,500*** | 0,634*** | 0,604*** | 0.078 |
| NR3C2 | −0.065 | 0.0461 | – | – | – | – | – | – | −0.065 |
| FKBP4 | −0.279 * | −0.204 * | 0.0941 | −0.172*** | −0.477** | −0.354* | – | – | – |
| HSP90AA1 | 0.063 | 0.101 | – | – | – | – | – | – | 0.333** |
First, using the GEO2R tool, we extracted expression data of selected genes from two publicly available gene expression microarray datasets, i.e., from dataset 1 (post-mortem cerebellum specimens of 50 human subjects without psychiatric diagnoses (GSE35974 (Chen et al., 2013)) as well as from a dataset comprising 1231 post-mortem specimens of ten brain regions originating from 134 control individuals (GSE46706 (Trabzuni and Thomson, 2014) – dataset 2). Analyses of cerebellum specimens of dataset 1 and 2: Extracted gene expression levels of FKBP5 (FK 506 binding protein 51) were correlated with those of the following genes (names of encoded proteins in brackets): NEFH (neurofilament H), HOMER1 (HOMER1), SYP (synaptophysin), MAP2 (microtubule-associated protein 2), GFAP (glial fibrillary acidic protein), NR3C1 (glucocorticoid receptor), NR3C2 (mineralocorticoid receptor), FKBP4 (FK 506 binding protein 52), HSP90AA1 (heat shock protein 90 alpha transcript variant 2). Analyses of hippocampal specimens and of specimens from ten brain regions in dataset 2: Extracted gene expression levels of FKBP5 were correlated with those of FKBP4. Second, we correlated relative FKBP5, FKBP4 and, for control, NR3C1 levels in peripheral whole blood of patients suffering from severe posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) vs. non-traumatized healthy controls before vs. after a Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) – the patient and control groups were fused before correlational analyses were performed. Significances are indicated with *, p ≤ 0.05; **, p ≤ 0.01, ***, p ≤ 0.001.