Grant: Operating Grant

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 40% of clinical depressions do not adequately respond. It is likely that clinical depression involves several biological mechanisms and that present treatments miss some of these mechanisms. The proposed study will test whether inflammation is part of clinical depression and is one of these overlooked mechanisms. Substances that create inflammation are increased in the blood in clinical depression and there is a report that these same substances are elevated in the brain in clinical depression. Exposures that cause inflammation also create depressed mood. We wish to brain scan people with clinical depression to detect inflammation and to see if we can reverse this inflammation with medications that target inflammation for other conditions (but were not designed for depression). This would be the first carefully designed study to look for brain inflammation in clinical depression and treatment resistant depression. Our data gathered to date shows greater inflammation in both. If brain inflammation is increased in clinical depression, then reversing it may be a new treatment. If the medications studied reduce inflammation then they could be used as a new way to help cure clinical depression.