Why women suffer from depression more often

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Science knows well that the prevalence of depression in women is higher than in men And researchers from the University of California in Davis found out why this happens.

There are enough methods of therapy for depressive disorders, but unfortunately, they do not help everyone. It is known that women are more often faced with depression, but until now it was not clear what is the cause of this feature.

Moreover, women's depressions are usually more difficult to treat than men's. Scientists observed how a special part of the brain – the nucleus accumbens – is affected during depression. It is important for processes of motivation, response to rewarding experiences, and a variety of social connections, all of which are affected during depression.

Previous analyzes of the nucleus accumbens have shown that in depressed women, different genes are turned on and off that for some reason they are not activated in men. These changes can trigger depression, and researchers have now observed in lab mice that female mice exhibited more depressed behavior than males.

This rodent model showed that negative social interactions changed gene expression in female mice, roughly the same patterns are observed in women with depression.

Scientists managed to identify a key mediator of behavior in the nucleus accumbens, which is associated with depression. And this discovery theoretically allows for the development of drugs that affect this mediator in the future, which will help in the treatment of female depression in particular. More targeted therapy, as a rule, turns out to be more effective.