ArticleEuropean psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists2025
Associations between IL-6 and trajectories of depressive symptoms across the life course: Evidence from ALSPAC and UK Biobank cohorts.
Article in European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Natural antidepressants in neuroimmunomodulation: molecular mechanisms, action targets, and therapeutic potential.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Pooled it
- Best practices for using biological data in psychological research.Journal of mood and anxiety disorders · 2026Review
- Article
- Longitudinal trajectories of depressive symptoms in children are associated with baseline inflammation and HIV status.Communications health · 2026Article
- Longitudinal trajectories of depressive symptoms in children are influenced by baseline inflammation and HIV status.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Expression differences and relationships of endothelin-1, interleukin-6 and c-kit in hypertensive patients with and without depression.World journal of psychiatry · 2025Article
- Peripheral Levels of Selected Biomarkers in Patients with Post-Sarcoidosis Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.Journal of inflammation research · 2025Article
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10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPeripheral inflammatory markers, including serum interleukin 6 (IL-6), are associated with depression, but less is known about how these markers associate with depression at different stages of the life course.
methodsWe examined the associations between serum IL-6 levels at baseline and subsequent depression symptom trajectories in two longitudinal cohorts: ALSPAC (age 10-28 years;
resultsHigher baseline IL-6 was associated with worse depression symptom trajectories in both cohorts (largest effect size: 0.046 [ALSPAC, age 16 years]). These associations were stronger in the younger ALSPAC cohort, where additionally higher IL-6 levels at age 9 years was associated with worse depression symptoms trajectories in females compared to males. Weaker sex differences were observed in the older cohort, UK Biobank. However, statistically significant associations (pFDR <0.05) were of smaller effect sizes, typical of large cohort studies.
conclusionsThese findings suggest that systemic inflammation may influence the severity and course of depressive symptoms across the life course, which is apparent regardless of age and differences in measures and number of time points between these large, population-based cohorts.
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