抑郁症是一种常见且容易复发的精神疾病，其病因复杂，主要由遗传、代谢和社会因素等多方面因素影响，具体的发病机制尚不明确。近年来，有关抑郁症的炎症因子假说引起了研究人员的广泛关注，大量临床实验研究显示抑郁症与中枢和外周血中促炎症因子的增加有关，外周血中炎症因子可通过特异性转运蛋白跨过血脑屏障的方式在脑中扩散，激活或参与脑部炎症反应，最终影响了脑部情绪调节区域的神经元活动和神经递质的释放，进而引发抑郁症状。本文总结归纳了炎症因子与抑郁症的关系及其可能机制，为进一步开展抑郁症预防控制、临床治疗和科学研究提供借鉴。“,”Depression is a common and recurrent mental disease, with complex etiology, which is mainly affected by genetic, metabolic and social factors. The specific pathogenesis is still unclear. In recent years, the hypothesis of inflammatory factors related to depression has attracted wide attention of researchers. A large number of clinical experimental studies have shown that depression is related to the increase of proinflammatory factors in central and peripheral blood. The inflammatory factors in peripheral blood can spread in the brain through the way of specific transporters across the blood-brain barrier, and activate or participate in the brain inflammatory response, and ultimately affect the neuronal activity and neurotransmitter release in the emotional regulation area of the brain, which in turn leads to depressive symptoms. This paper summarizes the relationship between inflammatory factors and depression and its possible mechanism, which provides reference for further prevention and control, clinical treatment and scientific research of depression.