Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of WI, Madison, WI, USA.
Brain Behav Immun. 2024 Nov;122:388-398. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2024.08.035. Epub 2024 Aug 18.
A growing body of work has implicated inflammation in the pathogenesis of depression. As not all individuals with heightened levels of peripheral inflammation develop symptoms of depression, additional work is needed to identify other factors that catalyze the relationship between inflammation and depressive symptoms. Given that elevated levels of inflammatory activity can induce a variety of emotional changes, the present study examined whether emotional clarity, the trait-like ability to identify, discern, and express one's emotions, influences the strength of the association between inflammatory signaling and concurrent and prospective symptoms of depression.
Community adolescents (N = 225, M = 16.63 years), drawn from a larger longitudinal project investigating sex and racial differences in depression onset, provided blood samples to determine peripheral levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), and C-reactive protein (CRP) at a baseline visit, along with self-report measures of emotional clarity and depressive symptom severity. Depressive symptom severity was assessed again at a follow-up visit approximately 5-months after baseline.
Hierarchical multiple regressions detected a significant interaction between inflammatory markers and emotional clarity on future depression severity, controlling for baseline depressive symptoms. Specifically, among adolescents with low levels of emotional clarity, higher levels of IL-6, CRP, and inflammatory composite scores were significantly associated with greater future depression severity.
These results indicate that low emotional clarity and high inflammatory signaling may jointly confer risk for prospective depressive symptom severity among adolescents. Therapeutic interventions that improve emotional clarity may reduce risk of depressive symptoms among adolescents with low-grade peripheral inflammation.
越来越多的研究表明炎症与抑郁症的发病机制有关。由于并非所有外周炎症水平升高的个体都会出现抑郁症状，因此需要进一步研究以确定其他因素来促进炎症与抑郁症状之间的关系。鉴于炎症活动水平升高会引起各种情绪变化，本研究探讨了情绪清晰度（一种识别、辨别和表达自身情绪的特质能力）是否会影响炎症信号与当前和未来抑郁症状之间关联的强度。
本研究从一个更大的纵向项目中抽取了社区青少年（N=225，M=16.63 岁）作为研究对象，该项目旨在调查性别和种族差异对抑郁发病的影响。在基线访问时，青少年提供了血液样本以确定白细胞介素 6（IL-6）、肿瘤坏死因子-α（TNF-α）和 C 反应蛋白（CRP）的外周水平，并进行了情绪清晰度和抑郁症状严重程度的自我报告测量。大约在基线后 5 个月时进行了随访，再次评估了抑郁症状的严重程度。
分层多元回归检测到炎症标志物和情绪清晰度对未来抑郁严重程度的交互作用，同时控制了基线抑郁症状。具体而言，在情绪清晰度较低的青少年中，较高的 IL-6、CRP 和炎症综合评分与未来抑郁严重程度显著相关。
这些结果表明，情绪清晰度低和炎症信号高可能共同导致青少年未来抑郁严重程度增加。改善情绪清晰度的治疗干预可能会降低低度外周炎症青少年的抑郁症状风险。
