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 Research & Giving News Article  Uncontrollable stress is a major contributing factor for neuropsychiatric disorders such as major depression and post-traumatic stress disorders, according to Ronald Duman, Ph.D., a 2005 NARSAD Distinguished Investigator and professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the Yale University School of Medicine. Among other things, Dr. Duman noted, stress has been linked to changes in the hippocampus, a part of the brain particularly susceptible to stress. Over the last two years, NARSAD investigators and others have observed a falling off of new nerve-cell growth, or neurogenesis, in the hippocampi of people with depression. In a study of mice subjected to chronic stress, whose results appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Jan. 15, Dr. Duman and colleagues reported that the receptor for a molecule called IL-1ß prevents the hippocampus from creating new neurons. IL-1ß is a cytokine—or signaling compound—that promotes inflammation. Previous animal studies showed that exposure to stress increases IL-1ß in several brain areas, including the hippocampus. It also has been demonstrated that administering IL-1ß produces several stress-like effects in the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal systems as well as in the hippocampus. The team blocked the effects of IL-1ß with an inhibitor, resulting in blockade of cell-cycle arrest. “This is the first study to show how IL-1ß—when activated by acute and chronic stress—arrests the cell cycle,” said Dr. Duman. “This could provide new targets for the development of antidepressant medications,” Dr. Duman said of the findings. This article was adapted by NARSAD with permission of Yale University. |
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