Depression is a mental health condition that affects how a person feels, thinks, and acts.
It causes feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and a loss of interest in activities that were once enjoyable.
Other common symptoms of depression include changes in appetite and sleep patterns, low energy, difficulty concentrating, and thoughts of self-harm or suicide.
Depression can be caused by a combination of genetic, environmental, and psychological factors. It is a common condition, affecting millions of people worldwide, and it can occur at any age.
As people get older, they may experience problems with their memory, thinking, and mood, like feeling sad or depressed.
Scientists have found that a protein called GDF11, which is found in the blood, can help improve the memory and behavior of older mice. But, until now, they didn’t know how it worked.
In a new study, researchers from the Institut Pasteur, CNRS, and Inserm have discovered that when they gave older mice GDF11 over a long time, it activated a natural cleaning process inside their brains, called “autophagy.”
This helped get rid of old, damaged cells and create new cells in the hippocampus, which is important for memory.
This also helped restore brain activity and improve the mice’s behavior, making them act like younger mice.
To see if this could help humans, the team checked the blood of people with depression and found that they had lower levels of GDF11 than others.
This could help doctors diagnose depression or even find a way to treat it. The researchers hope that GDF11 could be used as a way to treat memory and mood problems in older people too.
In conclusion, this study shows that GDF11 can help improve memory and behavior in older mice by getting rid of old cells and creating new ones.
It also shows that people with depression have lower levels of GDF11, which could help doctors diagnose and treat it.
If you care about depression, please read studies about how dairy foods may influence depression risk, and B vitamins could help prevent depression and anxiety.
For more information about mental health, please see recent studies about common medications for anxiety, and results showing some vegetarian diets may be linked to depression.
The study was conducted by Carine Moigneu et al and published in Nature Aging.
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