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A new study by researchers from Emory University has found that a medicine that is used to reduce inflammation may be the answer for depression in people.

"Inflammation is the body's natural response to infection or wounding," Andrew H. Miller, MD, senior author for the study and professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University School of Medicine, was quoted as saying b y Medical Xpress.

"However when prolonged or excessive, inflammation can damage many parts of the body, including the brain."

According to some studies conducted previously, depressed people with evidence of high inflammation seldom respond to traditional treatments for the disorder, including anti-depressant medications and psychotherapy.

The current study was conducted to check if blocking inflammation would help with either treatment in difficult-to-treat depression patients or only those with high levels of inflammation.

For the study, the authors employed infliximab, a biologic drug, used to treat autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

Biologic drug copies the effects of substances naturally made by the body's immune system, the report said.

All the participants of the study had major depression and were moderately resistant to the usual antidepressant treatment.

For the study, the participants were either administered infliximab or a non-active placebo treatment.

The findings of the study revealed that as a group, there was no significant improvement of depression symptoms between the drug and placebo groups.

However, subjects with inflammation, during separate examination, exhibited a much better response to infliximab than to placebo.

"The prediction of an antidepressant response using a simple blood test is one of the holy grails in psychiatry," says Miller, according to Medical Xpress.

"This is especially important because the blood test not only measured what we think is at the root cause of depression in these patients, but also is the target of the drug."

"This is the first successful application of a biologic therapy to depression," adds Charles L. Raison, MD, first author of the study.

"The study opens the door to a host of new approaches that target the immune system to treat psychiatric diseases."

Raison is an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Tucson.

The study was published Sept. 3 in the online version of Archives of General Psychiatry.