Chunk #85 — Comorbidity of Post-traumatic stress disorder or major depressive disorder with alcohol use disorder and immune signaling — Major depressive disorder and alcohol use disorder
Immune and neuroimmune mechanisms may drive the comorbidity found for AUD with PTSD or MDD. As shown in Fig. 3, these commonly comorbid psychiatric diseases share several core risk factors that have the potential to drive neuroinflammation. Inflammatory activation in brain can alter the behaviors and symptoms related to these disorders, including alcohol consumption, mood disturbances and PTSD symptoms, which may feed-forward to enhance specific neuroimmune-sensitive risk factors, thus creating a persistent cycle of inflammation. As suggested above, anti-inflammatory drugs may offer viable treatment options in patients with comorbid psychiatric diseases with common neuroimmune mechanisms.
