"The shape of neurons" determines the effect of antidepressants

Scientists believe that antidepressants do not work in more than 30% of people who suffer from them because of the different shape of their neurons. The most common serotonin reuptake inhibitor is the most common treatment for the disease.

Major depressive disorder is the most common cause of depression in the United States. In people aged 15 to 44, it shows symptoms of the disease, feels very sad or loses interest in most activities and affects 16.1 million adults. And the American depression.

But we do not yet know what causes depression, although a well-known theory states that low levels of the neurotransmitter, serotonin, may play a role in this process, stopping the neurotransmitter's uptake into the neuron.

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The researchers explained that it was difficult to research the reasons why some people did not improve after taking this medication. There are about 300,000 hard-to-reach neurons from the 100 billion nerve cells in the brain. It is unclear whether the differences in post-mortem brain tissue have been caused by depression, prolonged drug use, or biological causes.

Of the 803 patients with major depressive disorder, the researchers chose 3 who improved their condition after taking the drug, 3 others did not respond to treatment. They took skin biopsies and the scientists turned the skin cells into multiple-capacity stem cells, studied in vitro and found that neuronal projections were higher in those who did not respond to antidepressants than in those who presented symptoms after taking medications with lower levels of two genes in the brain.

"With each new study, we approach a more comprehensive understanding, among the complex neurological circuits that cause neurological and psychiatric diseases, including severe depression."

"This is the first study to present a new model for the study of serotonin neurons by pulling them from the skin cells of patients not responding to antidepressant treatment," said Dr. Valentina Mosenko, neuroscientist at the Faculty of Medicine. medicine and health of the University of Exeter.

"This study has allowed us to take a rare look at the fundamental characteristics of neurons that produce neurotransmitters of serotonin in the brain," said Dr. Ulrich Burch, a researcher at the University of Bristol in the UK. "This study is interesting because it compares the neurons of patients who responded to cell therapy. There are not enough studies to solve this problem."

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