Vagus Nerve Stimulation, Depression, and Inflammation

The effects of electroacupuncture treatment on the postoperative cognitive function in aged rats with acute myocardial ischemia–reperfusion

“…We speculated that the EA treatment could activate the CAP by stimulating the vagus nerve whose major neurotransmitter is acetylcholine. Previous reports showed that the vagus nerve stimulation could inhibit the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines (Das, 2007) and the results of the change in the levels of proinflammatory cytokines in our study were consistent with our hypothesis. This indicated that modulation of inflammatory response with the EA treatment by CAP might be an effective method to improve POCD, which was considered to be further investigated in the future study.…”

Effect of menopause and use of contraceptives/hormone therapy on association of C-reactive protein and depression: A population-based study

“…However, inflammation has been suggested to precede depression, e.g., based on the findings that cytokines (i.e., interferon-α and interleukin-2) can (a) cause sickness behavior when administered for therapeutic purpose [40,41] and, in vulnerable persons, lead to depressive symptoms/depression [42], and (b) precede depression based on prospective studies [43,44]. Thus, a marked increase of new-onset depression at perimenopause [45,46] could possibly be a consequence of decreasing endogenous hormone production and a subsequent diminishing of possible moderating effect of endogenous hormones on the association under investigation [47] at perimenopause.…”

Depression: A repair response to stress-induced neuronal microdamage that can grade into a chronic neuroinflammatory condition?

“…Several hypotheses have been ventured, such as that its effectiveness is due to the anticonvulsant effects of VNS, or due to neural connections between the vagus and brain regions that regulate serotonin and norepinephrine (Groves and Brown 2005, Nemeroff et al 2006) (for reviews). An alternative possibility is that VNS effectiveness in depression is attributable to its effects on the inflammatory system (Corcoran et al 2005, Das 2007). VNS is effective against a wide variety of conditions with inflammatory features, such as endotoxemia (Borovikova et al 2000), experimental sepsis, ischemia/reperfusion injury, hemorrhagic shock, arthritis, and other inflammatory syndromes (Tracey 2007) (for review).…”