Background: Currently, depression diagnosis is mainly composed of self-report questionnaires examining current symptoms and interviews with professionals. However, due to the absence of biomarkers, there are limitations in objective and comprehensive diagnosis. In this study, we tried to verify the clinical validity of a diagnostic software ‘Minds.NAVI’, which evaluates depression by integrating a biomarker with salivary stress hormone and a comprehensive psychological index of depression.
Methods: The psychological index of Minds.NAVI evaluates not only the current symptoms of depression and suicide risk, but also the adult attachment type, adverse childhood experience, difficulty in mentalization, and resilience as an integrated assessment. Stress hormones, which are cortisol and DHEA, were measured in saliva collected four times a day.
Result: We have verified the validity of Minds.NAVI with a total of 47 people, including 12 healthy control and 35 depressive patients. The sensitivity of Minds.NAVI for depression diagnosis was 97.87% and the specificity was 91.67%. For the diagnosis of health-mild depression, the accuracy was 93.75% and the specificity was 91.67%, and for the diagnosis of moderate-severe depression, the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy were all 100%. The cortisol/DHEA values of saliva hormones showed no difference between the groups, but showed a negative correlation with the depressive symptoms.In addition, strong associations were confirmed between saliva and blood stress hormone concentrations.
Conclusion: The results of this study show that Minds.NAVI, which integrated a biomarker of salivary stress hormone and comprehensive psychological index, is effective as an objective diagnostic tool for depression and has sufficient potential.
Acknowledgement) This research was supported by a grant of the Korea Health Technology R&D Project through the Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI), funded by the Ministry of Health & Welfare, Republic of Korea (grant number : HI19C0481, HC20C0140).