New chemical combination may become new drug for treating depression

Recently, researchers from the University of California, Davis, discovered a new compound that could become a new drug for treating depression. The relevant research results were published in the international academic journal PNAS.

Depression is a relatively serious chronic mental illness. At present, about 350 million people in the world suffer from depression. Previous studies have found that soluble epoxide hydrolase may be a potential target for the treatment of depression. Many therapeutic drugs for inflammatory and inflammation-related diseases act on epoxide hydrolase. In this latest study, the researchers found an epoxide hydrolase inhibitor and conducted a series of experimental investigations on the inhibitor.

In the study, the researchers found that epoxide hydrolase was expressed more highly in critical brain regions of chronically stressed mice and that they also had mental illness before death (including depression, manic-depressive psychosis, and schizophrenia. The expression level of epoxide hydrolase was also higher in the patient's brain sample than in normal subjects. Epoxide hydrolase itself can regulate the inflammatory process, and earlier studies found that inflammation is also involved in the occurrence of depression, so the researchers found a strong inhibitor of epoxide hydrolase called TPPU, and experimentally proved that TPPU can quickly act on Inflammation and social frustration stress depression models.

The researchers said that most drugs for the treatment of mental illnesses are targeted at changing neuronal communication, and TPPU is mainly used to change the health status and microenvironment of neurons. The current antidepressant treatment for humans and animal models usually takes several weeks to function, so the rapid antidepressant effect exhibited by this epoxide hydrolase inhibitor in a mouse model of depression is of great concern.