October 10, 2022 is the 31st World Mental Health Day . This year's theme is "Creating a Good Environment and Helping Mental Health Together". On the occasion of World Mental Health Day, the article "Depression is not a simple bad mood" has attracted many people's attention.
Busy and tense urban life, high-tempo work pressure, emotional pressure, learning pressure, employment pressure, complex interpersonal relationships, etc., make depression one of the biggest diseases that harm people today. Depression has also become a popular term in modern society. According to statistics, there are 350 million depressed patients worldwide, which means that there is an "hidden" depressed patient in every 20 people.
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Depression ≠ bad mood
Depression is a common emotional mental disorder syndrome, which is mainly caused by continuous depression in mood, behavioral and cognitive abnormalities. The prevalence, recurrence rate and suicide rate remain high, and it is difficult to cure it has put a heavy burden on both the family and society.
So far, the cause of depression is not very clear, but it is certain that many factors in biological, psychological and social environment have participated in the onset of depression. Biological factors mainly involve genetics, neurobiochemistry, neuroendocrine, and nerve regeneration. Currently, most patients have the disease due to serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine below the normal range.
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Traditional treatment methods for depression
Psychological treatment, drug treatment, and physical therapy are the main treatment measures for depression. Currently, the first-line antidepressants in clinical practice mainly include selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI, representing the drugs fluoxetine , paroxetine , sertraline, fluvoxamine , citalopram and escitalopram ), serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI, representing the drugs venlafaxine and duloxetine ), norepinephrine and specific serotonin-specific antidepressants (NaSSA, representing the drug mirtazapine), etc.
It is disappointing that 75% to 80% of patients have relapsed multiple times in ten years, so patients with depression need preventive treatment. If there are more than 3 attacks, you should be treated for a long time, or even take medicine for life.
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stem cell opens the treatment of depression New World
In recent years, stem cells have achieved initial success in the treatment of neurological diseases such as cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury, brain trauma , confirming that stem cells can improve and repair the structure and function of nervous system to a certain extent, and also provide a theoretical basis for the use of stem cells to treat depression. The potential characteristics of self-renewal and multidirectional differentiation of
stem cells have brought new methods to many incurable neurological diseases. The pathological mechanism of depression is the atrophy of the intracranial hippocampus and its volume is significantly reduced. Therefore, the efficacy of input stem cells is caused by stem cells to regenerate new hippocampal cells. The efficacy of stem cells in the treatment of depression is clear, and stem cells make every suitable patient see the hope of "new birth".
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Stem cell treatment case related to the treatment of depression
A clinical trial was a female patient with recurrent depression aged 25-60 years old, with a recurrent depression syndrome that meets the clinical standards for major depression, and did not respond after 6 months of antidepressant treatment.
The subjects were divided into two groups, 13 people in the treatment group and 3 people in the control group. The treatment group was infused with concentrated umbilical cord blood cells every other week, and a total of 4 times, with a single cell dose of 2.5x 10^8. The control group of was infused with the same treatment and frozen peripheral blood leukocytes, and both groups received standard antidepressant treatment at the same time.
△ Beck Depression Scale Score Comparison of
Treatment Results: Although the emotional decline of depression has not been completely reversed and relieved, the patient's condition has improved, showing an optimistic attitude and more vivid facial expressions. There was no significant difference in HDRS-17 score between the treatment group and the control group. Although there were slight fluctuations during treatment, the treatment group remained in the moderate depression range, while the control group returned to the initial level at 6 weeks.
△ MCCB score comparison
study also confirmed that stem cells can exert their paracrine effects by releasing neurotrophic factor , and are clinically manifested through metabolism and psychological stimulation, promoting patients' response to basic neural drug treatment. stem cells have multidirectional differentiation and regeneration functions, which can effectively repair inhibited nerve cells and stimulate their vitality.
stem cells have shown good results in the treatment of anti-depression, which undoubtedly provides a potential effective treatment for a variety of incurable neuroimmune diseases, including depression. I believe that with the maturity of stem cell technology, it will involve more and more disease fields and become the "new nemesis" of refractory diseases.
