Inflammatory Mechanisms and Intervention Research in Depression

It is well known that depression is highly prevalent worldwide and mild to moderate depression is particularly common. It is categorically confirmed that the antidepressants discovered and developed during the past half-century have provided patients with a clinically significant advance in safety, tolerability and ease of use. However, one-third of patients fail to respond to conventional antidepressant medication. Indeed, unraveling the pathophysiology of depression is challenging due to heterogeneous depressive syndromes and diverse etiologies. Furthermore, there has been a lack of novel, innovative treatment methods for individuals with depression for a long time. In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to the inflammatory processes and pathophysiology of depression, and it is now well established that anti-inflammation can be assumed as a strategy to tackle resistance to antidepressants. As a matter of fact, considerable evidence from interventional studies has shown that treatment methods, such as infliximab, herbal medicine, acupuncture, neuromodulation, mindfulness, and some selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, that regulate inflammation could effectively treat depression, and even exert anti-inflammatory effects in antidepressant treatment. At present, although many insights have been obtained into the inflammatory mechanisms in the pathology and antidepressant treatment of depression, there are still many questions to be answered. For example, is it a causal or just a correlative relationship between inflammation and the occurrence of depression; if antidepressant treatments focusing on anti-inflammatory strategy should adopt single-target or multi-target; and if these antidepressant treatments could complement each other to improve the effectiveness?

The purpose of this Research Topic is to bring together experts in the field of inflammation and intervention research in depression to contribute to our understanding of the inflammatory mechanisms in the pathology and antidepressant treatment of depression.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:
• Association between inflammatory mechanisms and interventional methods for depression.
• Inflammatory mechanisms of depression, including but not limited to clinical studies and animal model studies.
• Interventional studies of depression by regulating inflammation, including but not limited to chemical medicine, herbal medicine, acupuncture, neuromodulation, and mindfulness in antidepressant therapies.

In this Research Topic, original and review articles on basic science, preclinical, and clinical findings are warmly welcome.