{"id":755459,"date":"2026-08-31T09:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/755459\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T09:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:52:11","slug":"is-it-true-that-mental-health-is-affected-by-inflammation-life-and-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/755459\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it true that \u2026 mental health is affected by inflammation? | Life and style"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inflammation is the immune system\u2019s response to injury or infection. If you cut yourself and the area becomes red and swollen, that\u2019s inflammation: immune cells are rushing to fight germs and repair tissue.<\/p>\n

But inflammation can also occur in the body during illnesses, and a low level of inflammation can arise from obesity or ageing. \u201cA marker of that inflammation tends to be elevated cytokines in people\u2019s blood,\u201d says Prof\u00a0Daniel M Davis, head of life sciences at Imperial College London and author of Immune Health: A Myth-Busting Guide<\/a>. \u201cThey\u2019re the molecules immune cells use to communicate with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are more than 100 types of cytokines in your body, and some affect the brain. \u201cIf you have a fever, it\u2019s not just physical, you\u2019re also mentally affected,\u201d says Davis. \u201cSome cytokines influence how you feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markWe haven\u2019t disentangled this enough to know what part of the immune system to target to improve people\u2019s mental health<\/p>\n

Studies of patients with rheumatoid arthritis have found that cytokine-blocking anti-inflammatory drugs can also improve mood. Scans suggest this may be because blocking cytokines changes activity in the brain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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A study of nearly 5,000 children<\/a> found that those with higher than average levels of the cytokine IL-6 in their blood at the age of nine, with no sign of depression, were more likely to suffer depression at 18. Another study, this time of adults, <\/a>found a correlation between the development of an immune-related disease and a previous diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, including depression and anxiety.<\/p>\n

Scientists don\u2019t yet know enough to use this knowledge to treat conditions such as depression or anxiety. \u201cSeveral lines of evidence point to an overlap of\u00a0immune and mental health, but we haven\u2019t disentangled this enough to know who could benefit, and exactly what part of the immune system we could safely target to improve people\u2019s mental health,\u201d says Davis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inflammation is the immune system\u2019s response to injury or infection. If you cut yourself and the area becomes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-755459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}