Cytokines and depression: findings, issues, and treatment implications
-
Christopher F. Sharpley
and
Linda L. Agnew
Abstract
Depression has traditionally been classified as a disorder of the brain and CNS, with behavioural manifestations which comprise its symptomatology. That symptomatology includes a range of behaviours that also occur during certain immunological responses to pathogens, and this relationship has engendered a large research literature focussed upon the links between cell messenger cytokines and depression. However, despite many studies of those links, the precise contribution that cytokines make to the development of depression remains unclear. In order to explicate the current state of knowledge of this contribution, a review of literature reviews reported during the last five years, plus a sample of empirical studies reported during the last three years, was conducted. Results indicate that there are many plausible pathways between cytokine responses to pathogens and depression, most notably via ‘sickness behaviour’, which supports a model of depression as withdrawal behaviour instigated by the brain and that is based upon primitive responses to uncontrollable and life-threatening environmental challenges. However, the precise nature of the mechanisms by which various cytokines communicate with brain regions and influence functions that are trophic to depressive symptomatology remains to be explicated.
©2011 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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- Cytokines and depression: findings, issues, and treatment implications
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Articles in the same Issue
- Publisher’s Note
- Impoverished environment, cognition, aging and dementia
- When is adult hippocampal neurogenesis necessary for learning? Evidence from animal research
- Synapses, NMDA receptor activity and neuronal Aβ production in Alzheimer’s disease
- Cytokines and depression: findings, issues, and treatment implications
- BDNF-TrkB signalling in fear learning: from genetics to neural networks
- Role of the basolateral amygdala and NMDA receptors in higher-order conditioned fear
- Allosteric modulation of ATP-gated P2X receptor channels
- Current perspectives on potential role of albumin in neuroprotection
- Spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) as an animal model for ADHD: a short overview
