Depression can be a devastating illness, plaguing millions of people worldwide with feelings of sadness, hopelessness, apathy and fatigue. Despite numerous antidepressant drugs, as many as a third of patients don’t respond to medication. This has forced doctors to be more creative in finding different treatments for the condition.
In the past two decades, researchers have tied depression to a seemingly unrelated condition: inflammation, the body’s natural response to stress. It could stem from injury or infection, or even emotional issues like an unhappy marriage or problems at work. Some amount of inflammation is generally beneficial, as it ramps up production of cytokines, proteins that help us heal and protect us from the effects of overexertion.
But excessive cytokine levels, and the inflammation they bring on, could come at a cost: A number of studies suggest that high levels of cytokines could contribute to depression. Some studies even indicate that anti-inflammatory drugs could reduce those cytokine levels and help people recover from depression.
