Post-traumatic stress disorder (
PTSD) is a widespread psychiatric injury that develops serious life-threatening symptoms like
substance abuse, severe depression,
cognitive impairments, and persistent anxiety. However, the mechanisms of post-traumatic stress injury in brain are poorly understood due to the lack of practical methods to reveal biochemical alterations in various brain regions affected by this type of injury. Here, we introduce a novel method that provides quantitative results from Raman maps in the paraventricular nucleus of the thalamus (PVT) region. By means of this approach, we have shown a lipidome comparison in PVT regions of control and
PTSD rat brains. Matrix-assisted
laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry was also employed for validation of the Raman results.
Lipid alterations can reveal invaluable information regarding the
PTSD mechanisms in affected regions of brain. We have showed that the concentration of
cholesterol,
cholesteryl palmitate,
phosphatidylinositol,
phosphatidylserine,
phosphatidylethanolamine,
sphingomyelin,
ganglioside,
glyceryl tripalmitate and
sulfatide changes in the PVT region of
PTSD compared to control rats. A higher concentration of
cholesterol suggests a higher level of
corticosterone in the brain. Moreover, concentration changes of
phospholipids and
sphingolipids suggest the alteration of
phospholipase A2 (PLA2) which is associated with inflammatory processes in the brain. Our results have broadened the understanding of biomolecular mechanisms for
PTSD in the PVT region of the brain. This is the first report regarding the application of Raman spectroscopy for
PTSD studies. This method has a wide spectrum of applications and can be applied to various other brain related disorders or other regions of the brain.