Most treatments for conditions like anxiety, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) target chemical activity in the brain, but a new study supports targeting the immune system. Researchers from Queen Mary University of London and the University of Roehampton discovered that mice with high levels of a protein called Immuno-moodulin, or Imood, experienced significant anxiety. Treating those mice with an antibody against Imood caused the symptoms to disappear in a few days. Researchers have now shown that people with OCD have levels of Imood up to six times higher than unaffected people and are working to develop an antibody therapy for future study.
Source: Immuno-moodulin: A new anxiogenic factor produced by Annexin-A1 transgenic autoimmune-prone T cells