AUTHOR=Lyra e Silva Natalia de M. , Lam Minh P. , Soares Claudio N. , Munoz Douglas P. , Milev Roumen , De Felice Fernanda G. 

TITLE=Insulin Resistance as a Shared Pathogenic Mechanism Between Depression and Type 2 Diabetes

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychiatry

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2019

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00057

DOI=10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00057

ISSN=1664-0640

ABSTRACT=Neuropsychiatric disorders, type 2 diabetes (T2D) and obesity are major public health concerns that have been increasingly proposed to be intimately connected. T2D and obesity are associated with increased risk of neuropsychiatric and mood disorders, including diminished cognitive performance, and increased rates of depression, anxiety and dementia. More recently, molecular connections between depressive disorder, T2D and obesity have been established, since insulin resistance, a hallmark of type 2 diabetes, also develops in the brains of patients with depression. In this article, the possible molecular mechanisms underlying defective brain insulin signaling in depression are discussed, with emphasis on evidence that depression and some metabolic disorders share common inflammatory signaling pathways and hyperactivity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress axis. We further discuss that novel insight into the link between insulin resistance and depression may advance the development of effective treatments for depression.