Reconceptualizing major depressive disorder as an infectious disease

[Emily]

http://www.biolmoodanxietydisord.com/content/4/1/10

This article is part of the series The gut-brain axis: Emerging evidence in health and disease.



Perspective Reconceptualizing major depressive disorder as an infectious disease

Turhan Canli

• Correspondence: Turhan Canli turhan.canli@stonybrook.edu

Author Affiliations
<section> Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA
Department of Radiology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA
Program in Genetics, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA
Program in Neuroscience, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA


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<section class="cit"> Biology of Mood & Anxiety Disorders 2014, 4:10 doi:10.1186/2045-5380-4-10
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biolmoodanxietydisord.com/content/4/1/10

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody> <tr><td>Received:</td><td>29 July 2014</td></tr> <tr><td>Accepted:</td><td>9 October 2014</td></tr> <tr><td>Published:</td><td>21 October 2014</td></tr> </tbody> </table> ? 2014 Canli; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.


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<section>Abstract

In this article, I argue for a reconceptualization of major depressive disorder (major depression) as an infectious disease. I suggest that major depression may result from a parasitic, bacterial, or viral infection and present examples that illustrate possible pathways by which these microorganisms could contribute to the etiology of major depression. I also argue that the reconceptualization of the human body as an ecosystem for these microorganisms and the human genome as a host for non-human exogenous sequences may greatly amplify the opportunity to discover genetic links to the illness. Deliberately speculative, this article is intended to stimulate novel research approaches and expand the circle of researchers taking aim at this vexing illness.

</section> Keywords:

Genomics; Virus; Bacterial; Parasite; Depression

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