Could lycopene—a plant extract—be an effective antidepressant?

Emerging evidence suggests that lycopene—a natural plant extract—may have antidepressant properties. New research in Food Science & Nutrition reveals the mechanisms behind its antidepressant effects.

In mice with depressive-like behaviors, brain analyses revealed impairments in the hippocampus. Lycopene treatment lessened these impairments and reversed the animals’ depressive-like traits.

Lycopene treatment boosted the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein with roles in many aspects of brain function. Experiments indicated that a signaling pathway involving BDNF (called the BDNF-TrkB pathway, which helps regulate learning, memory, and communication between neurons) is inhibited in mice with depression, and that lycopene treatment alleviates this inhibition.

The study “offers an effective avenue for the development of novel antidepressant therapies,” the authors wrote. “We plan to conduct further verification in future studies and include multiple brain regions in our research.”

URL upon publication: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/fsn3.70003

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Food Science & Nutrition is an open access journal enabling the rapid dissemination of fundamental and applied research related to all aspects of food science and nutrition, as well as interdisciplinary research that spans these two fields. We believe that all research, so long as it is evidence-based and factually correct, deserves a forum to be read and commented upon. We therefore strive to be an author-friendly journal welcoming all contributions of sound science.

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