The Antidepressant-like Effects of Estrogen-mediated Ghrelin

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.

Cite this article as:

Wang Pu, Liu Changhong, Liu Lei, Zhang Xingyi, Ren Bingzhong and Li Bingjin, The Antidepressant-like Effects of Estrogen-mediated Ghrelin, Current Neuropharmacology 2015; 13 (4) . https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1570159X1304150831120650