Better understanding of mental illnesses would apparently be possible in future --- with University of Pittsburg researchers having found that the brains of highly depressed women undergo molecular changes!

On the basis of their National Institute of Mental Health-funded study of 42 women – 21 of them suffering from depression and 21 having no history of the condition -, the US researchers found that the post-mortem brain tissue samples of depressed women showed pattern of reduced expression of some specific genes in the brain’s amygdale section which is chiefly responsible for sensing emotions as well as expressing them.

According to senior study author Etienne Sibille – associate professor of psychiatry at Pitt School of Medicine -, the research is probably one of the few researches that have focused on women, even though they are two times more likely that men to suffer depression with more severe and frequent symptoms.

The findings of this research - published online in the Molecular Psychiatry journal, could pave the way for better future research on depression, given the fact that the researchers had also effectively recreated the molecular changes in a mouse model.

Noting that the researchers believed that “if there were molecular changes in the brains of depressed people,” they would be better identify these changes in samples that came from women, Sibille said that the findings “give us a better understanding of the biology of this common and often debilitating psychiatric illness (depression)”!