Pathogenesis of depression and the mechanism research in TCM treatment of major depression / 药学实践杂志

ABSTRACT

Depression is a serious health hazard and the World Health Organization predicts that depression will be the second leading cause of abnormal death and disability by 2020.Currently,most antidepressants are tricyclic antidepressants (TCA),tetracyclic antidepressants and selective 5- HT reuptake inhibitors.Long term use of those medications will develop resistance and adverse reactions.In addition,drugs that block a single target are often hard to achieve therapeutic outcomes due to the biological abnormalities involving multiple systems in the body.Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM)can simultaneously act on multiple targets to influence the disease network in many aspects at the same time.This approach has higher efficacy and lower side effects than a single chemical medication.Recently,there are increasing numbers of research papers on antidepres-sant mechanism of TMC,mainly focused on the release level of neurotransmitters,hippocampus brain derived neurotrophic fac-tor(BDNF)expression and cytokines,etc.The latest researches also indicated that the gut microbiota has involved the devel-opment of emotional diseases and the diseases related to central nerves system.This paper reviews the mechanism studies of TMC as antidepressants and neuroprotection agents in order to shed new light on the study of depression pathogenesis and de-velopment of new antidepressant medications.