Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

According to the World Health Organization, clinical depression is the leading cause of death and disability in moderate to high income nations, affecting up to 5% of Canadians at any one time. Current treatments often help, but half of clinical depression cases do not adequately respond. We think that there are multiple brain changes in clinical depression, some of which are missed by common treatments. We think that brain inflammation may be one of those brain changes that could contribute to clinical depression and affect treatment response. Our site has a special brain imaging tool to detect inflammation. Inflammation is the body's response to infection or trauma, like the redness after a scrape on the skin. In 2015, our research site discovered that brain inflammation happens in medication-free clinical depression. We also discovered that brain inflammation is present in commonly co-occurring psychiatric illnesses, such as obsessive compulsive disorder. It is possible that brain inflammation could contribute to multiple psychiatric illnesses. Our present study is the first to see whether there is brain inflammation in treatment resistant depression (clinical depression that does not respond to treatment). It will also be the first study to see whether we can reduce the brain inflammation with an anti-inflammatory medication, minocycline, which is currently on the Canadian market for another indication. If brain inflammation is detected in treatment resistant depression, new treatments could be developed to change the inflammation to make it more curative or to get rid of the inflammation. If minocycline reduces the brain inflammation, this might result in an entirely new treatment direction for treatment resistant depression and other commonly co-occurring psychiatric illnesses.