Protein found linking stress and depression

Wednesday, February 25, 2009 - 15:56 in Psychology & Sociology

Unrelenting stress can both cause and exacerbate a host of psychological disorders, but researchers don’t know exactly how. Pushing forward a mechanistic explanation of how stress works the brain over, scientists at Rockefeller have identified an important piece of a cell receptor that is behind anatomical changes in parts of brains under stress. The particular piece, or subunit, has been recently implicated in major depression, response to antidepressants and also susceptibility to suicidal ideation, in the STAR*D trial, the largest study of antidepressant-treatment response conducted to date.

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