{"id":664587,"date":"2026-05-25T19:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T19:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/664587\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T19:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T19:12:13","slug":"a-common-arthritis-drug-appears-to-work-when-antidepressants-dont-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/664587\/","title":{"rendered":"A Common Arthritis Drug Appears to Work When Antidepressants Don’t : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Around a third of people<\/a> with major depressive disorder don’t respond to standard treatments \u2013 but an alternative therapy may be hiding right under our noses.<\/p>\n

As strange as it sounds, a new approach targeting inflammation could help.<\/p>\n

Tocilizumab<\/a> is an anti-inflammatory drug commonly used to treat immune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis \u2013 and it may help patients whose depression does not respond to standard treatments.<\/p>\n

Across a four-week, proof-of-concept trial, 30 people with moderate-to-severe depression<\/a> who hadn’t responded to standard anti-depressants \u2013 and who had signs of inflammation in their blood \u2013 were given either tocilizumab or a placebo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"DepressionTocilizumab treatments improved depression scores more than a placebo. (Foley et al., JAMA Psychiatry, 2026)<\/p>\n

Compared to those taking a placebo, participants given tocilizumab showed improvements in depression severity, fatigue, anxiety, and quality of life.<\/p>\n

By the end of the study, 54 percent (seven participants) of the tocilizumab group were considered to be in depression remission, against 31 percent (five participants) of the placebo group.<\/p>\n

“This work represents an important milestone in the development of new treatments for depression \u2013 especially difficult-to-treat depression, which affects millions of people in the UK alone,” says<\/a> immunologist Golam Khandakar from the University of Bristol.<\/p>\n

A previous meta-analysis<\/a> found a significant link between depression and low-level inflammation in the body.<\/p>\n

So could treating one condition help the other?<\/p>\n

The tocilizumab therapy takes aim at receptors for interleukin 6 (IL-6), a type of protein known as a cytokine linked to inflammation in the body.<\/p>\n

Earlier work<\/a> by some of the same researchers had suggested that elevated IL-6 could be linked to depression in some people.<\/p>\n

One of the changes that tocilizumab brings about in the body is to close off the IL-6 pathway to calm down the immune system and reduce inflammation<\/a> \u2013 that’s why it’s effective for treating arthritis, and could be effective for treating depression.<\/p>\n

\"Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n

Many current depression therapies focus on correcting chemical imbalances in the brain, and while we’re seeing progress<\/a> in these areas too, it looks increasingly likely that fighting persistent, background inflammation might help in many cases as well.<\/p>\n

And something of note that the researchers observed: Those who started the study with signs of higher inflammation in their bodies were most responsive to the tocilizumab treatment, further strengthening the link.<\/p>\n

However, this effect was seen only among people with higher initial levels of a different inflammation marker.<\/p>\n

“This is one of the first randomized controlled trials to test immunotherapy for depression, the first to test IL-6R as the treatment target, and the first to use a targeted approach to select patients most likely to benefit, and to show that it works,” says<\/a> Khandakar.<\/p>\n

It’s worth bearing in mind that the results of the trial didn’t reach statistical significance \u2013 but with only 30 participants, it wasn’t designed to. This was a proof-of-concept study, and the main aim was to see if this was a research area worth investigating further.<\/p>\n

In that respect, the team got an affirmative answer.<\/p>\n

\"YouTube frameborder=”0\u2033 allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share” referrerpolicy=”strict-origin-when-cross-origin” allowfullscreen><\/p>\n

The findings here are enough to make larger studies worthwhile: across a larger, more diverse group of participants, and for a longer period of time. That will get us closer to understanding the link between inflammation<\/a> and depression.<\/p>\n

As tocilizumab is already available as a prescription drug safe for human consumption, it means that it’ll be quicker to get regulatory approval for its use with depression as well \u2013 and no notable side effects<\/a> were observed in this trial.<\/p>\n

Related: Cannabis Use Disorder Strongly Linked to Major Depression, New Review Finds<\/a><\/p>\n

The research also sheds more light on just how complex and nuanced depression is.<\/p>\n

The condition looks different in different people<\/a> \u2013 from symptoms to severity \u2013 and that’s something that treatments might start to factor in more specifically in the years to come.<\/p>\n

“Depression is estimated to affect around 10 to 20 percent of people worldwide during their lifetime, yet for many patients current treatments do not work well enough,” says<\/a> immunologist \u00c9imear Foley, from the University of Bristol.<\/p>\n

“Our study moves us closer to more tailored depression care, where treatments are chosen to better fit a person’s biology. This will help us to provide the right treatment to the right patients at the right time.”<\/p>\n

The research has been published in JAMA Psychiatry<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Around a third of people with major depressive disorder don’t respond to standard treatments \u2013 but an alternative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[97,1352],"class_list":["post-664587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-msft-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}