Forscher fanden hohe SGK1-Werte in Blutproben von Menschen mit Depressionen, Menschen, die ihr Leben beendeten, und die höchsten Werte von allen bei Menschen mit Kindheitstraumata. Durch die Injektion von SGK1-Inhibitoren in das Blut von Mäusen konnte depressives Verhalten bei längerem Stress erfolgreich gehemmt werden.

I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-025-03269-6

From the linked article:

According to researchers at Columbia and McGill universities, the answer is yes. Their discovery of the powerful role of the stress-responsive protein SGK1 is key, as lead author Christoph Anacker, assistant professor of clinical neurobiology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia, and his co-authors explore in their Molecular Psychiatry paper, “Hippocampal SGK1 promotes vulnerability to depression: the role of early life adversity, stress, and genetic risk.”

About a decade ago, Anacker and his co-researchers discovered strangely **high levels of SGK1 in blood samples from people experiencing depression who were not receiving medication for it. His team eventually also found SGK1 at high levels in the brain tissue of people who ended their own lives, and the highest levels of all in people who had reported childhood trauma**. In the US, about 60% of people with diagnoses for major depression, and around two-thirds of people who attempt to take their own lives, faced trauma in childhood.

**Experiments injecting SGK1 inhibitors into the blood of mice have successfully inhibited the mice from demonstrating depressive-like behaviour during prolonged stress**. Therefore, SGK1-blocking drugs offer tremendous hope, especially with patients for whom selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) don’t work.