353 unipolar depressive inpatients (155 males, 198 females) were recruited for the Munich Antidepressant Response Signature (MARS) project (Hennings et al., 2009; Ising et al., 2009) at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry (MPIP) in Munich, Germany. The mean age (±SD) was 49.5 ± 14.3 (males: 48.4 ± 13.4, females: 50.4 ± 15.0) years. Please see Hennings et al. and Ising et al. for more details on patient recruitment (Hennings et al., 2009; Ising et al., 2009). Briefly, patients were included in the study within 1–3 days of admission to the hospital and diagnosis was ascertained according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV criteria. Patients fulfilling the criteria for at least a moderate depressive episode (HAM-D ≥ 14 on the 21-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale) entered the analysis. Patients suffered from a first depressive episode (36.8 %) or from recurrent depressive disorder (63.2 %). All included patients were of European descent and 88.7% were of German origin. 366 control subjects were matched to the patient sample for age, gender and ethnicity from a randomly selected
