Effects of Chronic Taurine Administration on Gene Expression, Protein Translation and Phosphorylation in the Rat Hippocampus

摘要

Depressive disorder is a serious psychiatric disease and about 20 % of the victims suffers from depression (Berton and Nestler 2006). Antidepressants developed by pharmaceutical companies have been widely used especially in advanced countries. Unfortunately, some antidepressants including SSRIs have severe side effects such as nausea and anorexia (Vaswani et al. 2003), thus development of drugs without side effects is necessary for keeping QOL of patients. Also, life style is a key point for prevention of mental disorders; therefore diet, exercise, and sleep are thought to be important factors for mental condition. Especially, the values of nutrients and foods should be discovered, because nutrients and foods consisting of antidepressant-like activity have not yet been well studied.