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Review
. 2021 Oct 20:15:768571.
doi: 10.3389/fncir.2021.768571. eCollection 2021.

A Glimpse Into the Sexual Dimorphisms in Major Depressive Disorder Through Epigenetic Studies

Branden Cahill  1 , Samuel Poelker-Wells  1 , Jonathan F Prather  1 , Yun Li  1
Affiliations
Review

A Glimpse Into the Sexual Dimorphisms in Major Depressive Disorder Through Epigenetic Studies

Branden Cahill et al. Front Neural Circuits. .

Abstract

Depression is an umbrella term used to describe a mood disorder with a broad spectrum of symptoms including a persistent feeling of sadness, loss of interest, and deficits in social behavior. Epigenetic research bridges the environmental and genetic landscape and has the potential to exponentially improve our understanding of such a complex disorder. Depression is also a sexually dimorphic disorder and variations exist within epigenetic modification sites between sexes. These sex-specific mediators may impact behavioral symptomology and could serve as therapeutic targets for treatments to improve behavioral deficits. This mini review will focus on the social behavior perspective of depression and specifically explore the sexually different epigenetic modifications on depression.

Keywords: early life stress; epigenetics; rodent models; sexual dimorphism; single-cell RNA sequencing; social defeat; social isolation; stress.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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