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Major depressive disorder (MDD) is beyond doubt a common, disabling, and costly condition. MDD associates hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis alterations. We sought to investigate two candidate variants which could have a role in the genetic susceptibility for stress or corticoid-induced MDD: glucocorticoid receptor (GR) - nuclear receptor subfamily 3 group C member 1 (NR3C1) rs41423247 and brain-derived neurotrophic factor rs6265 BDNF:c.442G>A Val66Met. We enrolled 82 Romanian subjects, 1:2 male to female ratio, 53.54±8.98 years old, diagnosed with an episode of major depression at the Clinical Neuropsychiatry Hospital in Craiova, Romania, and 286 healthy controls, 34.28±16.34 years old. All subjects were genotyped using specific ThermoFisher Scientific assays on a ViiA™ 7 real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) system. The impact of certain genetic variants may be ethnic-specific. In our Romanian cohort, rs41423247 NR3C1:c.1184+646C>G has a minor allele frequency of 29.2%, and rs6265 BDNF:c.442G>A of 22.2%. Neither reached significance in our study, under any of the association models - dominant, recessive, or allelic. Interpretation of our negative findings requires caution: literature provides arguably more evidence for the association between the analyzed polymorphisms; our study has sample size challenges, from which refined phenotyping limitations derive.

Aging is explored by multiple lines of research, in a pursuit of understanding this natural process. The motor response is usually the main dependent variable in studies regarding physical or cognitive decline in aging. It is therefore critical to understand how the motor function changes with age. The present review, aims at presenting briefly some of the most recently published works in the field, focusing on the three key components of the motor unit. The changes that the skeletal muscle undergoes aging sarcopenia, alteration of fiber type distribution and also intimate metabolic transformations. The neuromuscular junction suffers at cellular and molecular level, with possible implications of various cell components, mediators and oxidative stress. Motoneuron loss and change in their physiological properties accompany remodeling in the motor units. The applicability of knowledge in this field lies in possible interventions intended to counteract these age-related losses.