A 2026 mouse study found that complete IL-6 deficiency worsened motor dysfunction and dopaminergic injury in MPTP and alpha-synuclein A53T Parkinson’s disease models, with earlier and broader vulnerability in female knockout mice.1 The result cuts against a simple “less inflammation is always better” frame: recombinant IL-6 partly improved MPTP-induced motor dysfunction and striatal dopaminergic terminal …
A 2026 controlled study of 96 people found severe long-COVID fatigue across 3 validated fatigue scales, but the tested peripheral inflammation, cellular-stress, neuroprotection, and autoimmunity markers did not significantly differ by group or explain fatigue severity.1 The finding argues against a simple blood-marker story, not against the reality of long-COVID fatigue. Research Highlights Fatigue was …
A 2025 Journal of the American Chemical Society study identified 4 unusual Morganella morganii phospholipids that activated TLR2/TLR1 immune receptors and induced inflammatory cytokines, especially IL-6.1 The finding does not prove that one gut bacterium causes depression, but it gives the microbiome-depression field something it often lacks: a named molecule and a receptor pathway. Research …
The link between psychological stress and chronic inflammation is well-documented — what’s been less clear is which specific inflammatory proteins move with anxiety in real-world community samples. A 2026 analysis from Loomans-Kropp et al. measured a 33-marker panel in 190 minoritized and medically underserved adults from the Cancer Disparities Research Network and identified three biomarkers …
Whole-body hyperthermia looks less like generic relaxation and more like a timed biological stressor: in a small depression substudy, a single session was followed by early Hamilton Depression Rating Scale improvement, heat-shock gene activation, and immune-process enrichment that included interleukin 6 production. Research Highlights Depression scores improved early: in the 18-person RNA sequencing substudy, whole-body …
A 210-person randomized assessor-blinded trial found that adding weekly Hegu-point catgut embedding to gabapentin improved 4-week postherpetic-neuralgia response from 80.00% to 92.38%; compared with gabapentin alone, the add-on arm also ended with lower sleep-problem scores and fewer adverse events.[1] This 2026 trial supports an add-on signal that still needs sham-controlled confirmation because follow-up lasted only …
The broad cytokine story failed its most direct community test: in 972 adults, depression, alcohol use, and alcohol use disorder (AUD) were not associated with C-reactive protein (CRP) or a pre-registered pro-inflammatory cytokine index. The only multiple-testing-corrected cytokine hits ran opposite the hypothesis — AUD was linked to lower IL-1β, IL-4, IL-10, and IL-12 — …