Study: Depression linked to different inflammatory proteins in boys, girls
Researchers at King’s College London said on Wednesday that a new study found that depression and risk of depression are linked to different inflammatory proteins in boys and girls. File Photo by Sasint/Pixabay
Researchers at King’s College London said on Wednesday that a new study found that depression and the risk of depression are linked to different inflammatory proteins in boys and girls.
The researcher’s work on the sex differences in the relationship between inflammatory proteins and depression was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
Researchers said that when inflammation happens in the body, proteins called cytokines are released into the blood. Earlier studies have documented that higher amounts of cytokines are tied to depression in adults, but its relationship with young people was unclear.
“This is the first study to show differences between boys and girls in the patterns of inflammation that are linked to the risk and development of adolescent depression,” Zuzanna Zajkowska, a postdoctoral researcher at King’s College and first author of the study, said.
“We found that the severity of depressive symptoms was associated with increased levels of the cytokine interleukin-2 in boys, but interleukin-6 in girls. We know more adolescent girls develop depression than boys and that the disorder takes a different course depending on sex so we hope that our findings will enable us to better understand why there are these differences and ultimately help develop more targeted treatments for different biological sexes.”
To gauge the inflammation, researchers measured the blood cytokine levels in 75 boys and 75 girls between the ages of 14 to 16. The 150 participants — who were from Brazil — were recruited into three groups with equal numbers. The groups were those at low risk for depression and not depressed; those who were at high risk of depression and not depressed; and those who are currently experiencing major depressive disorder, or MDD.
Researchers said the measurements indicated that there are sex differences between the individual inflammatory proteins that are associated with depression in adolescents.
Higher levels of the cytokine interleukin-2, or IL-2, were associated with both increased risk for depression and the severity of depressive symptoms in boys, but not in girls.
They also found that higher levels of IL-6 were associated with the severity of depression in girls, but not boys. With boys, the levels of IL-2 were higher in the high-risk than the low-risk group and even higher in the group diagnosed with depression.
“Our findings suggest that inflammation and biological sex may have combined contribution to the risk for depression,” said Valeria Mondelli, clinical professor of psychoneuroimmunology at King’s College.
“We know that adolescence is a key time when many mental disorders first develop and by identifying which inflammatory proteins are linked to depression and how this is different between boys and girls we hope that our findings can pave the way to understanding what happens at this critical time in life.”
Modelli said the research highlights the importance of considering the combined impact of biology, psychology, and social factors to understand the mechanisms underlying depression.”
The research was part of the IDEA, or Identifying Depression Early in Adolescence, project funded by MQ Mental Health Research