抑郁症是一种常见的严重危害人类身心健康的精神疾病。抑郁作为一种生物-心理-社会交互致病的疾病，其发病机制至今仍未达成一致。近年来，抑郁症和糖尿病伴发或共病的临床和基础研究日益增多,使得葡萄糖代谢特别是中枢葡萄糖代谢、胰岛素抵抗在抑郁症发病过程中的作用受到关注。中医“肝”和“脾”是生理上相互依赖，病理上相互影响的两个藏象系统。大量研究证实，中医肝—脾互为病理的核心生物学内涵是“情志—能量网络的失衡”，其与抑郁症葡萄糖代谢失衡机制有相通之处。因此，需要将中医肝脾互为病理的生物学内涵与现代医学有机结合起来进行研究，为进一步探索抑郁症发病机制、寻找抑郁症中医药补充替代治 疗提供科学依据。

Depression is a common mental illness that seriously harms to the physical and mental health of human beings. Due to its biological- psychological- social interaction pathogenic feature, researchers hold different opinions for the pathogenesis of depression. Recently, accumulating the clinical and basic researches on the comorbidity of depression and diabetes make the roles of glucose metabolism, especially central glucose metabolism and insulin resistance in the pathogenesis of depression get much more attention. It has been believed that the "liver" and "spleen" are closely related to each other physiologically and pathologically. A large number of studies have confirmed that the core biological connotation of liver-spleen and pathology of traditional Chinese medicine is "emotion-energy network imbalance", which has similarities with the mechanism of glucose metabolism imbalance in depression. Therefore, it is necessary to combine the biological connotation of the liver and spleen with the modern medicine to conduct the further research, which will consequently provide scientific basis for further exploring the pathogenesis of depression and finding complementary and alternative treatment for depression.

国家自然科学基金委重点项目（81630104）：基于证候病机的逍遥散-肝郁脾虚证方证相关的生物学基础研究，负责人：陈家旭；教育部教育领域交流与合作项目：“一带一路”背景下推动构建中东欧国家“三位一体”中医药文化传播格局的研究，负责人：陈家旭；暨南大学中央高校基本科研业务费专项资金资助项（21618334）：基于下丘脑nesfatin-1-oxytocin-脑干POMC通路的肝郁脾虚证脑-肠相关性研究，负责人：马庆宇。