Depression, gender and cellular immunity: influence of gender and severity of depression on the cellular immunity.

Background: Exposure to stress modifies the humoral and cellular immunity by the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. On one hand, this psycho-immunological theory allows the analyse of links between immunity and depression. On the other hand, the correlation between the immune response, the clinical expression in major depressive disorder (MDD) and the gender was proven.