Molecular markers of depression
Depression is one of the not fully understood diseases. Its symptoms are:
- weight loss;
- weight gain;
- insomnia;
- psychomotor agitation;
- feeling of worthlessness, guilt.
The main symptom of depression is anhedonia – a loss of interest in pleasure, reward, cognitive impairment, a deficit in social cognition, and a slowdown in information processing.
Cognitive impairment cannot always be cured with pharmacological drugs. But, for example, fluoxetine enhances cognitive function to a greater extent than desipramine and amitriptyline. And SSRIs enhance memory, indirectly, by improving mood.
Cognitive drugs may be new treatments for depression. Thus, donesepil helps to reduce the signs of depression, which has been proven by positive ratings of the depression scale. Experiments have shown that the enhancement of cholinergic and serotonergic transmission with drugs leads to a change in neuroplasticity , network synchrony between the amygdala and hippocampus.
Depression is associated with chronic social damage and is reflected at the proteome level. This is confirmed by the action of fluoxetine, which affects the expression of many proteins.
Thus, the search for mediator, molecular markers of depression will reveal the pathogenesis of the disease and prescribe drugs not by trial and error, but based on objective criteria .