Link Between Depression, Telomere Enzyme, Aging And Chronic Disease

Link Between Depression, Telomere Enzyme, Aging And Chronic Disease

The in the beginning symptoms of major depression may exist behavioral, but the common mental ailing is based in biology - and not limited to the brain. In recent years some studies have linked greater, long-term depression with life-imminent chronic disease and with earlier decease, even after lifestyle risk factors esteem been taken into account.

Now a scrutiny team led by Owen Wolkowitz, MD, professor of psychiatry at UC San Francisco, has build that within cells of the immune plan, activity of an enzyme called telomerase is greater, up the body average, in untreated individuals with major depression. The preliminary findings from his latest, ongoing study were at the plant living but a year meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in San Francisco.

Telomerase is every enzyme that lengthens protective end caps forward the chromosomes' DNA, called telomeres. Shortened telomeres esteem been associated with earlier death and through chronic diseases in population studies.

The heightened telomerase etc in untreated major depression might give an account of the body's attempt to go to war let slip the dogs of war back against the progression of complaint, in order to prevent biological hurt in long-depressed individuals, Wolkowitz afore.

The researchers made another discovery that may suggest a protective role for telomerase. Using attractive resonance imaging (MRI), they found that, in untreated, depressed study participants, the bulk of the hippocampus, a brain form that is critical for learning and memory, was associated with the amount of telomerase briskness measured in the white blood cells. Such one association at a single point in time cannot have ing used to conclude that there is a object-and-effect relationship with telomerase helping to guard the hippocampus, but it is colorable, Wolkowitz said.

Remarkably, the researchers furthermore found that the enzyme's smartness went up when some patients began seizing an antidepressant. In fact, depressed participants by lower telomerase activity at baseline - in the same proportion that well as those in whom enzyme mode of exercise increased the most with treatment - were the ly likely to become less depressed with treatment.

"Our results are consistent through the beneficial effect of telomerase when it is boosted in animal studies, whither it has been associated with the shooting of new nerve cells in the hippocampus and through antidepressant-like effects, evidenced by increased exploratory mien," Wolkowitz said. Wolkowitz cautions that his new findings are preliminary due to the shallow size of the study and be obliged to be confirmed through further research.

The researchers besides measured telomere length in the corresponding; of like kind immune cells. Only very chronically depressed individuals showed telomere curtailment, Wolkowitz said.

"The longer people had been depressed, the shorter their telomeres were," he related. "Shortened telomere length has been antecedently demonstrated in major depression in most, but not all, studies that receive examined it. The duration of vitiation may be a critical factor."

The 20 depressed participants enrolled in the study had been untreated toward at least six weeks and had each average lifetime duration of depression of not far from 13 years. After baseline evaluation and laboratory measures, 16 of the depressed participants were treated by sertraline, a member of the principally popular class of anti-depressants, the serotonin-selective-reuptake-inhibitors (SSRIs), and hereafter evaluated again after eight weeks. There were 20 hale participants who served as controls.

The ongoing study in continuance is accepting depressed participants who are not things being so taking antidepressants. Wolkowitz's team also studies chronic inflammation and the biochemical what is seen of oxidative stress, which he said have often been reported in greater depression. Wolkowitz is exploring the supposition that inflammation and oxidative stress make merry a role in telomere shortening and accelerated aging in dint.

"New insights into the mechanisms of these processes may well precede to new treatments - both pharmacological and behavioral - that have a mind be distinctly different from the current progeny of drugs prescribed to treat concavity," he said. "Additional studies might persuade to simple blood tests that can measure accelerated immune-cell aging."