Departments of Psychiatry and Neurobiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06508, United States.
Curr Opin Cell Biol. 2011 Dec;23(6):730-7. doi: 10.1016/j.ceb.2011.09.002. Epub 2011 Oct 11.
Depression is associated with structural alterations in limbic brain regions that control emotion and mood. Studies of chronic stress in animal models and postmortem tissue from depressed subjects demonstrate that these structural alterations result from atrophy and loss of neurons and glial cells. These findings indicate that depression and stress-related mood disorders can be considered mild neurodegenerative disorders. Importantly, there is evidence that these structural alterations can be blocked or even reversed by elimination of stress and by antidepressant treatments. A major focus of current investigations is to characterize the molecular signaling pathways and factors that underlie these effects of stress, depression, and antidepressant treatment. Recent advances in this research area are discussed and potential novel targets for antidepressant development are highlighted.
抑郁症与控制情绪和心境的边缘脑区的结构改变有关。在动物模型的慢性应激研究和抑郁患者的组织尸检中表明，这些结构改变是由于神经元和神经胶质细胞的萎缩和丧失引起的。这些发现表明，抑郁症和与应激相关的心境障碍可以被视为轻度神经退行性疾病。重要的是，有证据表明，通过消除应激和抗抑郁治疗，可以阻止甚至逆转这些结构改变。目前研究的一个主要重点是描述应激、抑郁和抗抑郁治疗这些影响的分子信号通路和因素。本文讨论了该研究领域的最新进展，并强调了抗抑郁药开发的潜在新靶点。
