Depression is a common psychiatric disorder. Many depressed patients do not respond fully to current medications. Acupuncture has been widely used as an add-on treatment for depression. However, how acupuncture works to produce its antidepressant effect has not been understood fully.
Objective:
This article discusses possible mechanisms underlying the effects of acupuncture in ameliorating depressive symptoms in correlation with theories of depression.
Methods:
PubMed and Google Scholar were used to search for original and review articles with the following keywords: acupuncture AND depression; acupuncture AND monoamine; acupuncture AND BDNF; acupuncture AND inflammation; acupuncture AND cytokine; and stress AND depression.
Results:
Various kinds of evidence showed that acupuncture might be beneficial for treating depression via modulation of the central monoaminergic system, the hypothalmic–pituitary–adrenal axis, brain neurotrophin, and the neuroimmune system.
Conclusion:
Multiple pathways seem to be involved in the mechanism of action of acupuncture, and these mechanisms may work together to produce the antidepressant effects of acupuncture.
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