This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Psychiatry  • Depression  • Alert me on articles by topic

Joan Stephenson, PhD

JAMA. 2006;295:748.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Scientists from the United States, Sweden, and France have discovered a protein that appears to play an important role in depression, a finding they hope will shed light on why depression develops and help lead to new treatments (Svenningsson P et al. Science. 2006;311:77-80).

Although abnormalities in the serotonin system have long been linked with depression, the factors that cause a breakdown in serotonin signaling are unknown. In the new work, researchers found that the previously unknown protein, p11, appears to play a role in recruitment of one subtype of serotonin receptor (5-HT_1B) to the cell surface, where it can bind to serotonin.

The investigators found low levels of p11 in brain tissue collected from depressed patients at autopsy, as well as in "helpless" mice, a strain of mice that show signs of depression. They also found that p11 levels increased in mice treated with . . . [Full Text of this Article]