Researchers from China and the United States found out that people living in areas with dirty air people are stronger than the risk of depression. Dedicated to the dangerous effect of a polluted atmosphere. Article of scientists is published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.
Depression can develop every person, but some risk of its development is higher due to genetic factors. In the experiment of researchers from the Lieber Brain Development Institute, the University of Johns Hopkins and the University of Beijing took part 352 in China’s Volunteer capital. On the basis of genotyping for each of them, scientists calculated the score of the risk of development of depression, taking into account only genetic risks. After that, the researchers collected information as long as the past six months people were exposed to air pollution.
Then the participants of the experiment were forced to pass a number of cognitive tests, during which researchers with the help of functional magnetic resonance tomography were monitored which areas of the brain they were activated. In parallel, the passage of the test of people was subjected to social stress – negatively opposing their results. Researchers managed to identify that neural networks were destroyed both through the work of genes associated with depression and dirty air.
Scientists also compared neural networks obtained from the tissues of the brain of dead people with those with the participants of the experiment. They found out that people with a higher genetic predisposition to depression that lived in more polluted areas responsible for it genes are more often expressed together. It also turned out that this set of genes participates in inflammation processes.