Title:The Antidepressant-like Effects of Estrogen-mediated Ghrelin
Volume: 13
Issue: 4
Author(s): Pu Wang, Changhong Liu, Lei Liu, Xingyi Zhang, Bingzhong Ren and Bingjin Li
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Depression, estrogen, ghrelin, mechanism.
Abstract: Ghrelin, one of the brain-gut peptides, stimulates food-intake. Recently, ghrelin has also
shown to play an important role in depression treatment. However, the mechanism of ghrelin’s
antidepressant-like actions is unknown. On the other hand, sex differences in depression, and the
fluctuation of estrogens secretion have been proved to play a key role in depression. It has been
reported that women have higher level of ghrelin expression, and ghrelin can stimulate estrogen
secretion while estrogen acts as a positive feedback mechanism to up-regulate ghrelin level. Ghrelin
may be a potential regulator of reproductive function, and estrogen may have additional effect in ghrelin’s antidepressantlike
actions. In this review, we summarize antidepressant-like effects of ghrelin and estrogen in basic and clinical studies,
and provide new insight on ghrelin’s effect in depression.
