Epigenetic Alterations in Depression and Treatment Perspectives

Abstract

The global incidence of depression is progressively on the rise and tends to occur more in younger generations, however the pathogenesis of the disease is unclear. Meanwhile, epigenetics is a modification which produces heritable alterations in the DNA sequence, which ultimately manifest in phenotypic differences. It has been suggested that the onset and development of depression can be tentatively explained by the combination of epigenetic and environmental factors. This paper reviews epigenetic changes in depression in the context of environmental factors, including DNA methylation modifications, histone modifications, and non-coding RNA regulation. An epigenetic-based therapeutic outlook was also proposed in this paper, which initially elucidates the epigenetic mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of depressions and provides a theoretical basis for the treatment of depression.