Intron retention, a novel method for evaluating the response to ketamine in patients with treatment-resistant depression
Research Square Norihiro Okada, Kenshiro Oshima, Akiko Maruko et al.
Non-responders to ketamine treatment for depression show elevated viral infection markers based on intron retention (IR) gene analysis of RNA-seq data. Several IR genes associated with viral infection returned to healthy levels after ketamine regardless of responder status, suggesting non-responders are not resistant to ketamine but rather have an extremely high inflammatory state that the drug's effects cannot overcome. Excluding one transcriptomic outlier with extreme viral infection did not change IR gene conclusions but did alter differentially expressed gene (DEG) results, supporting the authors' claim that IR genes may be more useful markers of depression than DEGs.