14 DAY TRIAL // According to the conclusion of a new study by researchers at the Northeastern University, early life stress and adversity are linked to an increased number of inflammation biomarkers in the blood stream starting in adolescence. The work may help scientists better understand the roots of depression.
The work revealed that early life stress and the immune system are tightly linked, and showed that this connection is only made apparent from adolescence onwards. The role of childhood trauma and adversity in depression has only been studied marginally over the past few years.
The research group was led by Northeastern assistant professor of psychology Heather Brenhouse and her team. She says that this type of link makes it very difficult for doctors or psychiatrists to discover at-risk individuals early on, Science Blog reports.
In other words, children in this group will most likely go on to become depression adults, but health care providers have no way of targeting the mental condition early on. This translates into a higher chance of treatments or therapies failing, as the disease takes a deeper hold of patients.
On the bright side, the team determined that inflammation biomarkers in the blood can be used as an accurate predictive tool for the development of depression. This means that patients identified with excessive biomarkers can start addressing his mental illness before its symptoms start showing.
Brenhouse and her team are currently investigating inflammation linked to early-life stress in lab rats. Their goal is to figure out how inflammation affects the neural circuitry that are known to spawn depression and similar mental disorders later on in life.
The study is supported by a grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), and focuses on molecules that are released in the body by immune responses, called cytokines. Brenhouse will take blood samples from the lab rats throughout their life span, and search for any potential connection between these biomarkers and mental illness.
“We’re trying to figure out how early life stress, in particular, changes the development of the immune system and how that winds up leading to neuroinflammation later on,” the expert says.