Hypothesis of DNA methylation in the pathogenesis of depressive disorder

Abstract:

Depressive disorder is a kind of common mental disease，which is affected by the environment and heredity，but its etiologi－cal and pathophysiological bases are poorly understood. As the core of epigenetics，DNA methylation，affected by both genetic and environmental factors，can give reasonable explanations to the questions that can not be answered by traditional genetics. Currently，researches have confirmed that the hypomethylation or hypermethylation of some genes may have close relation with the pathogenesis of depressive disorder，thus it can provide a new therapeutic target and direction for the diagnosis and treatment of depressive disor－der. In this paper，we reviewed the genes whose DNA methylation was related with depressive disorder indicated by previous re－searches，and recent studies on the DNA methylation in depressive disorder.