Depression News and Research

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Depression is a serious medical illness that involves the brain. It's more than just a feeling of being "down in the dumps" or "blue" for a few days. If you are one of the more than 20 million people in the United States who have depression, the feelings do not go away. They persist and interfere with your everyday life.

Robust new method accurately identifies eight antidepressants

In recent years, a mass spectrometry process that can detect the amounts of drugs in a biological sample, such as blood, has become a powerful diagnostic tool for helping medical professionals identify and monitor levels of therapeutic drugs in patients, which can cause unwanted or dangerous side effects.

14 Feb 2023

Genetic variants that increase the risk of ADHD identified

Why are some people diagnosed with ADHD while others are not? And when is the seed of ADHD sown, in life or the womb?

10 Feb 2023

Psychological trauma related to HIV could make it difficult to end the AIDS epidemic

Failing to address the psychological trauma experienced by many older people living with HIV/AIDS will make it difficult, if not impossible, to end the epidemic, according to a Rutgers study.

8 Feb 2023

Microbiome therapeutic linked to quality of life improvement in patients with recurrent C. diff infection

Kevin Garey, professor of pharmacy practice and translational research at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy is reporting the first well-controlled study to demonstrate that a microbiome therapeutic, SER-109, is associated with significant quality of life improvement in patients with the debilitating recurrent infection and disease caused by Clostridium difficile (or C. diff).

1 Feb 2023

Long-term deep meditation may have a beneficial effect on gut microbiota, study suggests

Regular deep meditation, practised for several years, may help to regulate the gut microbiome and potentially lower the risks of physical and mental ill health, finds a small comparative study published in the open access journal General Psychiatry.

30 Jan 2023

Marine plankton samples can help understand the link between ocean pollution and chronic illnesses

Using samples from an almost century-old, ongoing survey of marine plankton, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine suggest that rising levels of manmade chemicals found in parts of the world's oceans might be used to monitor the impact of human activity on ecosystem health, and may one day be used to study the connections between ocean pollution and land-based rates of childhood and adult chronic illnesses.

9 Jan 2023

VUMC’s BioVU achieves deep-freeze storage of more than 300,000 biological samples

BioVU, Vanderbilt University Medical Center's biobank, has reached another milestone -; deep-freeze storage of more than 300,000 biological samples.

20 Dec 2022

Fastest-evolved regions of the human genome diverged rapidly after split from chimpanzee ancestor

A team of Duke researchers has identified a group of human DNA sequences driving changes in brain development, digestion and immunity that seem to have evolved rapidly after our family line split from that of the chimpanzees, but before we split with the Neanderthals.

24 Nov 2022

The influence of genes and small molecules on personal disease risk

Each individual has a unique chemical fingerprint. Small molecules in the blood, like fats or sugars, have a significant impact on how the human body responds to stress, which diseases people are predisposed to, and how serious an illness will be.

23 Nov 2022

Urban Mind app shows direct link between seeing or hearing birds and positive mood

New research from King's College London has found that seeing or hearing birds is associated with an improvement in mental wellbeing that can last up to eight hours.

28 Oct 2022

Harsh parenting leads to depression later in life

Strict parenting can influence how the body reads the children’s DNA. These modifications can become “hard-wired” into the DNA of kids who consider their parents to be harsh, enhancing their biological risk for depression in adolescence and later life.

20 Oct 2022

Interactional closeness with a dog can increase prefrontal brain activity

Researchers led by Rahel Marti at the University of Basel in Switzerland report that viewing, feeling, and touching real dogs leads to increasingly higher levels of activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain.

6 Oct 2022

The deep relationship between Tob gene and common mental health conditions

The Tob gene is well known for its connection to cancer. Scientists have discovered that this gene also has a significant role in lowering depression, fear, and anxiety in a multidisciplinary study that blends molecular biology with neuroscience.

12 Sep 2022

Microbes in the human gut impact neurological and emotional health

According to a recent viewpoint piece in Science by a UT Southwestern researcher, there is growing evidence that the microbes found in the human stomach might also affect a person’s neurological and emotional health.

9 Sep 2022

Genomics plays a major role in psychedelic drugs behavior

It can be crippling for those who suffer from conditions like depression, anxiety, and cluster headaches. In clinical research, psychedelic substances have demonstrated benefits as therapies for several ailments, but not in all cases.

1 Aug 2022

Healthy people can reap mental health benefits from gardening

Many longtime gardeners will tell you that the garden is their happy place. New research suggests that many people may indeed reap mental health benefits from working with plants -; even if they've never gardened before.

7 Jul 2022

Trial assesses the impact of Mediterranean diet on depression symptoms in young men

Depression is a common mental health condition that affects approximately 1 million Australians each year. It is a significant risk factor for suicide, the leading cause of death in young adults.

10 May 2022

New technique uses genetic data that may better predict disease risk in a population

Polygenic risk scores (PRS) are promising tools for forecasting disease risk, but current versions have bias built-in, which can reduce their accuracy in some populations and lead to health disparities.

10 May 2022

What does Creativity and Innovation Look Like In Science?

For World Creativity and Innovation Day, we asked leading experts within the life sciences industry 'What does creativity and innovation look like to you within science?'.

21 Apr 2022

New research shows significant variations in B-cells in women with PPD

Jerry Guintivano, PhD, of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, led an exclusive transcriptome-wide association research that showed substantial changes in B-cells in women with postpartum depression, with pathway observations indicating modified B-cell activation and insulin resistance.

19 Apr 2022