Targeting Gap Junctions: New Insights in the Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder.

CONCLUSION: The use of rodent models of depression, gene analysis of hippocampal tissues of MDD patients and post-mortem studies of brains from MDD patients suggest that astrocytic gap junction dysfunction may be part of MDD etiologies. Chronic antidepressant treatments of rats, rat cultured cortical astrocytes and human astrocytoma cell lines support the hypothesis that the up-regulation of gap junctional coupling between astrocytes could be an underlying mechanism for the therapeutic effect of antidepressants. However, two recent functional studies suggest that connexin43 hemichannel activity is part of several antidepressants mode of action and that astrocyte gap junctional intercellular communication and hemichannels exert different effects on antidepressant drug response. Even if they emerge as new therapeutic targets for new and more active treatments, further studies are needed to decipher the sophisticated and respective role of astrocytic gap junctions and hemichannels in MDD. PMID: 29589532 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Current Medicinal Chemistry - Category: Chemistry Authors: Tags: Curr Med Chem Source Type: research