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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Adolescent and Young Adult Psychiatry
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1524015
This article is part of the Research Topic Youth Mental Health, Particularly in Asian Populations View all 48 articles

Investigating the Relationship Between Inflammatory Cytokines and Adolescent Depression: A Comparative Analysis

Provisionally accepted
Mengqi Liu Mengqi Liu 1Jie Tang Jie Tang 1Xu Gaoyang Xu Gaoyang 1Xu Chen Xu Chen 1Kun Fang Kun Fang 2Fan He Fan He 1Yi Zheng Yi Zheng 1*
  • 1 Beijing Anding Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
  • 2 Capital Medical University, Beijing, Beijing Municipality, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) in adolescents poses a significant threat to physical health. Previous studies have indicated that adolescents with MDD exhibit immune activation.Objective: This study aimed to compare cytokine levels in adolescents with MDD to healthy controls and assess their diagnostic value.This cross-sectional study included 58 adolescent patients with depression from Beijing Anding Hospital (outpatients and inpatients) and 40 healthy adolescents recruited from the community.Multiplex cytokine analysis (Luminex xMAP) was used to measure serum levels of several cytokines. Data analysis was performed using SPSS (version 26.0) to compare cytokine levels between adolescents with MDD and healthy controls and assess gender differences. Correlations between cytokine levels and demographic data, clinical features and depressive symptoms were also analyzed. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to evaluate the diagnostic value of cytokines.Results: Serum IL-4, IFN-γ, and TNF-α levels were significantly elevated in MDD group compared with healthy controls (p < 0.05). In MDD group, the age of first onset of depression in females was significantly younger than that in males (p < 0.05), and female serum TNF-α levels were significantly higher than those in males (p < 0.05). BMI and serum IL-4 levels were significantly positively correlated in adolescents with MDD. The area under the ROC curve for serum IL-4 and TNF-α in diagnosing adolescent depression was 0.695 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.580 -0.809; p < 0.05), with a sensitivity of 0.793 and specificity of 0.675.Compared with healthy controls, adolescents with depression demonstrated significantly elevated serum cytokine levels, indicating immune activation which were higher in female. Cytokines 2 may have promising diagnostic value in adolescent depression, but further validation with additional indicators is needed.

    Keywords: adolescents, Inflammation, Depression, TNF-α, IL-4

    Received: 06 Nov 2024; Accepted: 15 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Liu, Tang, Gaoyang, Chen, Fang, He and Zheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Yi Zheng, Beijing Anding Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China

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