To fight off an infection or illness, the body shifts into a slow-down mode that mirrors some symptoms of depression. In fact, scientists now think the immune response itself may even cause the mood disorder.
Certain immune proteins in the body appear to mess with the minds of otherwise healthy, but depressed people as well. Those who suffer from major depression have higher levels of cytokines, immune proteins the body makes to fend off infections and to patrol the body for disease, and which laboratories mimic.
“It raises the issue, how much of how we feel — how much of who we are as people — is dictated in terms of our immune system?” says Miller, a researcher at Emory University in Atlanta.
Psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies have noted the downpour of evidence linking inflammation to depression. Miller says he and his colleagues have considered creating a new diagnostic category:
Major Depressive Disorder with Increased Inflammation. To combat this depression, he says, researchers must find a way to alter the body’s immune response. It is a risky strategy but one that offers hope to the nearly 30 percent of all depressed patients who don’t respond to the antidepressants currently on the market.
As logic, and misfortune, would have it, depression caused by inflammation is most prevalent in patients who have diseases associated with increased inflammation. Rates of depression are five to 10 times higher than average in patients with disorders that involve the immune system, including infectious diseases, cancer and autoimmune disorders, say Miller and Raison in a March report that appeared online in FOCUS. Inflammation is also a risk factor for diabetes and cardiovascular disease. When these diseases coincide with depression, patient outcomes can worsen.
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