Author:
Zhang Xiaoyan,Wang Yiming
Abstract
Depression is a world-wide psychological disease and millions of people suffer from it. The illness is basically characterized by low mood with some other diverse manifestations. The mutation in the gene sequence of Tryptophan hydroxylase 2 (TPH2) is one of the several possible causes of the depression, which results in the changed structure and function of TPH2, and then affects the synthetic process of 5- hydroxtrytamine (5-HT), so-called serotonin. The low level of 5-HT contributes to depression eventually, which has been tested by the animal model. This review purports to discuss the emerging relevance between TPH2 and depression as well as signaling pathways mediated by the gene expression, after that some therapeutic methods will be mentioned. It’s an urgency to understand the pathogenesis of depression and find more effective therapies, but there still remains a large amount of efforts to make and many mysteries to explore, thereby it is still a long way to go.