Association of systemic inflammation with specific types of depressive symptoms: A new approach towards identifying the inflammatory subtypes of depr

Complete title: Association of systemic inflammation with specific types of depressive symptoms: A new approach towards identifying the inflammatory subtypes of depression

Summary: Systemic inflammation has been implicated in the pathophysiology of depression. This notion is consistent with the cytokine hypothesis of depression, which posits that systemic inflammation and subsequent neuroendocrine responses can induce depressive-like symptoms in a subset of individuals. However, the collective evidence from both experimental and observational studies on the inflammation-depression link has been inconsistent. This discordance may be ascribed to methodological heterogeneity, including differences in the study samples (e.g., clinical versus non-clinical), sample sizes, measurement of constructs, and lack of covariate adjustment. Another possibility is that most studies to date have focused on depression as a single broad syndrome, thereby ignoring possible symptom- or domain-specific effects of inflammation on depression. The overall aim of my PhD is to explore the associations between systemic inflammation and specific types of depressive symptoms (i.e., individual symptoms and symptom domains), using both genotype and phenotype data.