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Abstract Background Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common mental illness that affects millions of people worldwide and imposes a heavy burden on individuals, families and society. Previous studies on MDD predominantly focused on neurons and employed bulk homogenates of brain tissues. This paper aims to decipher the relationship between oligodendrocyte lineage (OL) development and MDD at the single-cell resolution level. Methods Here, we present the use of a guided regularized random forest (GRRF) algorithm to explore single-nucleus RNA sequencing profiles (GSE144136) of the OL at four developmental stages, which contains dorsolateral prefrontal cortex of 17 healthy controls (HC) and 17 MDD cases, generated by Nagy C et al. We prioritized and ordered differentially expressed genes (DEGs) based on Nagy et al., which could predominantly discriminate cells in the four developmental stages and two adjacent developmental stages of the OL. We further screened top-ranked genes that distinguished between HC and MDD in four developmental stages. Moreover, we estimated the performance of the GRRF model via the area under the curve value. Additionally, we validated the pivotal candidate gene Malat1 in animal models. Results We found that, among the four developmental stages, the onset development of OL (OPC2) possesses the best predictive power for distinguishing HC and MDD, and long noncoding RNA MALAT1 has top-ranked importance value in candidate genes of four developmental stages. In addition, results of fluorescence in situ hybridization assay showed that Malat1 plays a critical role in the occurrence of depression. Conclusions Our work elucidates the mechanism of MDD from the perspective of OL development at the single-cell resolution level and provides novel insight into the occurrence of depression.

Objective: To systematically evaluate the efficacy and safety of acupuncture (AM) in the treatment of pregnancy-related symptoms such as acute vomiting during pregnancy., Methods: We comprehensively searched the available literature up to November 2021, including PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure Database, for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on AM for the treatment of severe vomiting, insomnia, pharyngeal and pelvic pain, mood abnormalities, and dyspepsia during pregnancy., Results: Sixteen RCTs with a cumulative sample size of 1178 cases were included. Of these, 964 patients were included in the Meta-analysis. The Meta-analysis results showed that AM was more efficient than Western medicine in treating discomfort during pregnancy [odds ratio ( OR ) = 1.19, 95% confidence interval ( CI ) (1.11, 1.28), P < 0.01]. AM was better than the control group in improving the visual analog scale scores [standard mean difference ( SMD ) = 0.62, 95% CI (0.53, 0.71), P < 0.01]. AM was superior to the control group in improving Numerical Rating Scale (NRS) symptom scores [ OR = 7.31, 95% CI (3.36, 15.94), P < 0.01]. There was no significant difference in adverse effects between the AM and sham-AM groups and the analgesic drug group [ OR = 0.70, 95% CI (0.39, 1.28), P = 0.25], but the treatment and control groups had mild adverse effects with a low incidence., Conclusions: AM is more effective than other treatments or pharmacotherapy alone in the treatment of pregnancy-related symptoms, and is relatively safe. However, the quality of the included trials was rather poor, and high-quality studies are required to confirm our findings.