According to a recent study, women may experience depression in a different way than men, primarily as a result of negative social interactions.
Women are still understudied in this discipline even though it is well known that they experience depression more frequently than men do.
According to Alexia Williams, doctoral researcher and recent Davis graduate, University of California-Davis, “in our rodent model, negative social interactions changed gene expression patterns in female mice that mirrored patterns observed in women with depression.” Williams made this statement in a press release.
Read more: Social media use tied to increase of depressive symptoms in adults
This discovery enabled me to concentrate my attention on the relevance of these statistics for women’s health, which is interesting because women are understudied in this sector.
According to Medical News, the study’s investigators who came from the University of California, Princeton University, Laval University, and Mount Sinai Medical Center, sought to comprehend how depression affects the nucleus accumbens, a part of the brain.
Depression has a significant impact on the nucleus accumbens, which is crucial for motivation and reactions to both happy and unpleasant situations.
According to Williams, “in our rodent model, poor social interactions affected the gene expression patterns in female mice that resembled those seen in women with depression.”
The researchers claim that identifying the depression’s root causes may help develop viable treatments.
Williams stated, “Our aim is that by conducting research like these, which concentrate on clarifying processes underlying particular symptoms of complicated mental diseases, we will get science closer to creating novel treatments for those in need.
“Understanding the long-lasting consequences of stress on the brain is made much easier because to these high-throughput analyses. Negative social interactions altered the gene expression patterns of female mice in our mouse model, and these patterns resembled those seen in depressed women,” UC Davis recent graduate and PhD researcher Alexia Williams, who developed and oversaw these studies, said as much.
